Neurosciences and Freedom
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2014-11-11 · 2:11:34 · 16,358 words
religion-theologypsychoanalysisideologycinema-art-culturehegel-dialecticsphilosophy-generalcommunism-socialismcapitalismethics
Žižek delivers a lecture ranging from the film 'The Rapture' to theology, psychoanalysis, and political theory. He argues that authentic atheism requires rejecting God even if God exists, traces a hidden tradition of a narcissistic or evil God through Malebranche, Job, Johnny Cash, and Primo Levi, and reads the Last Judgment as an arbitrary terror parallel to Auschwitz selection. He then pivots to the concepts of creepiness, perversion, and hysteria via Adam Kotsko, Lacan, and Freud, arguing that hysteria, not perversion, is the properly subversive political attitude, and that borderline disorder is hysteria's contemporary form. The Q&A addresses practice and Marxism, the Žižek–Chomsky dispute, religion's role for the left, and the failure of political art from Brecht to contemporary Biennales.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 21
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “God as pervert”
Žižek's reading of Malebranche's God who loves only himself and uses humanity to promulgate his own glory; structurally analogous to the Highsmith character who burns a house to perform the rescue.
as “consumerist slavery”
The condition in which formal freedom to do what one wants masks true enslavement to commodity stimulation; echoes Aristotle's observation that slaves act at random.
The injustice of market outcomes defuses envy by allowing losers to attribute failure to luck rather than their own inferiority, making capitalism psychologically liveable.
Following Lacan's Encore: God does not simply exist but ex-ists, existing outside himself through believers' belief; divine existence depends on the collective that sustains it.
Following Adam Kotsko, creepiness names the Freudian Unheimliche in contemporary register: the neighbor becomes creepy when the purpose behind his acts is impenetrable.
The Lacanian/Freudian distinction: the fellow man is the one we can identify with, while the neighbor is the same person become uncanny, carrying the creepy excess that cannot be assimilated.
as “Unheimliche / uncanny”
Freud's concept of the unsettling familiar; recast as today's 'creepiness,' the impenetrable desire that makes a neighbor uncanny rather than a mere fellow man.
as “objet petit a / object-cause of desire”
The object-cause of desire is not the object one desires but what triggers desiring; perversion arises when this cause is directly elevated into the goal itself (e.g. caressing hair instead of the person).
The officially ignored but institutionally tolerated obscene underside of any legal order (hazing, Guantanamo, clerical abuse) that sustains rather than undermines it.
as “jouissance / surplus enjoyment”
The obscene excess enjoyment that sustains social institutions and the law; inherent transgression (e.g. army hazing, Guantanamo) is its institutional form.
The formula expressing that liberal human-rights regimes require a hidden site of lawless violence (torture, waterboarding) as their obscene supplement.
as “ideological interpellation”
Althusser's concept by which ideology hails subjects into social identities; hysteria is its necessary supplement because the subject always asks 'why am I what you say I am?'
In today's post-authoritarian permissive society the traditional master is replaced by the neutral expert, and hysteria takes the form of borderline, desire on strike in the face of the impossible demand to have it all.
Žižek's definition of borderline disorder: the contemporary hysterical refusal of desire altogether in response to the contradictory injunction to be everything at once.
Adorno's insight applied to hyper-active consumerist society: authentic stepping-back and openness is harder and more subversive than pseudo-active engagement.
The symbolic order that structures social reality; in the Talmud story God himself is decentered with respect to it, no longer the big Other once the law is given over to collective human reasoning.
as “negative theology as void before God”
Žižek rejects the standard mystical reading of negative theology and reads it instead as the fundamental experience of inconsistency and negativity that opens the space for God, a space one can occupy without God.
Lacan's formula meaning that even self-declared atheists act religiously in daily practice; overcoming this is the genuine legacy of Christianity for Žižek.
as “the death drive”
The compulsive, self-enclosed satisfaction of drive beyond the pleasure principle; exemplified by Sade's compulsion to write rather than any achievable sexual goal.
For Lacan (Ethics Seminar), sublimation linked to the death drive moves from pathology to the universal; Žižek cautions against simply privileging drive over desire on this basis.
The traumatic abyss beneath social reality; not reducible to physical facts but the void that imaginary identification covers; horror-movie resurrection imagery points to it.
Stories he reaches for 7
A patient of Darian Leader slips of tongue when entering a restaurant with a date, saying 'a bed for two please' instead of 'a table for two.' Leader interprets this not as simple sexual wish but as the man anxiously reminding himself not to enjoy the meal so much that he forgets his erotic duty, the meal itself becomes the object-cause of desire.
“instead of saying a table for two he said a bed for two please”
Žižek recounts that when his father died he received a phone call from the hospital, said 'will you take care of the corpse, thanks,' and returned to writing his book. He says he never experienced the belated mourning of 'why didn't I embrace him', invoking a Christian Holy Spirit community as his real family.
“will you take care of the corpse, thanks, yes, boom and I continue writing my book. Never did I have this moment of oh dad why didn't I embrace you”
Levi describes the Auschwitz selection: an SS doctor glances at each prisoner in a fraction of a second and sends them left or right, life or death, with no appeal. Žižek parallels this with the Last Judgment as an arbitrary, undignified procedure unrelated to inner worth.
“In three or four minutes a hut of men is done, as is the whole camp of men in the course of an afternoon”
Two rabbis dispute a theological question; a heavenly voice sides with one, but the losing rabbi invokes Moses's commandment 'follow the multitude,' telling God he has no say. God responds 'my children have vanquished me' and runs away.
“You God did long ago write down in the law: You shall follow the multitude. And then God says my children have vanquished me”
In the 2010 Clash of the Titans, Zeus (Liam Neeson) complains that if men stop praying to and celebrating the gods, the gods will cease to exist, illustrating the Lacanian point that God ex-ists only through belief.
“Zeus played by Liam Neeson of course complains that if men stop praying to Gods and stop celebrating Gods in their rituals, Gods will cease to exist”
In this Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode, a woman falls for a handsome ventriloquist; at the end she touches him and discovers he is a puppet, the real person is the tiny dwarf inside the dummy. Žižek reads this as the structure of Christianity: Christ speaks for the Father but the Father is the empty dummy.
“What you thought it's a puppet was the real person and the big real person was the puppet. I think something like this happens in Christianity”
Norwegian theologian Zapffe's 1930s reading of Job: when God finally appears, Job finds not a sublime intellect but a 'cosmic cave dweller, a braggart and blusterer almost agreeable in his total ignorance of spiritual culture.' The novelty is God's qualitative baseness, not his power.
“a world ruler of grotesque primitiveness, a cosmic cave dweller, a braggart and blusterer almost agreeable in his total ignorance of spiritual culture”
Works invoked 23
Less Than Nothing book
Mentioned as where Žižek develops the starting point of Christianity as God who ex-ists.
Cited for the concept of proletarian self-consciousness as the greatest practical act and the demonstration that theory and practice are not opposed.
If This Is a Man book
The selekcja passage is one of Žižek's key exhibits for the structure of arbitrary divine judgment.
The Birds film
Mentioned as another Hitchcock film in which Jessica Tandy starred, the mother role.
Absolute Recoil book
Žižek directs the audience there for the full account of the Babylonian Talmud story about the rabbis defeating God.
The Shining (film) film
Cited to illustrate the neighbor/creepiness argument: Stephen King was right that Nicholson's casting destroys the effect because there is no prior normality from which creepiness can emerge.
Encore (Seminar XX) book
The formula 'God doesn't exist but ex-ists' is sourced here; Žižek uses it as the starting point for his reading of Christianity.
The Rapture film
Žižek admires 'the total madness of it' and screens its ending to open the lecture; the heroine's refusal to love God is his central theological example.
An American Utopia essay
Žižek finds the militarized-communism vision 'totally crazy' in an admirable way but thinks it logically fails; engages it seriously as a limit-test of communist imagination.
Not I play
Mentioned because Jessica Tandy played the Mouth in the original production, context for noting her range as an actress.
A Theory of Justice book
Criticized for failing to reckon with envy as a fundamental factor; Dupuy's encounter with Rawls over this point is recounted.
The ventriloquist-reversal ending (dummy is real, human is puppet) is used as the structural model for the Christian elimination of the Father.
The Man Comes Around song
Called a 'very weird song' that discerns the dark Protestant vision of God as arbitrary terror; Žižek says one can discern the traces of full acceptance of God's capricious authority in it.
Discussed in Q&A: sublimation linked to death drive moves from pathology to universal; Žižek calls it almost a 'taboo' because Lacan's claim of a 'pure desire' there is later contradicted in Seminar VIII.
The Tornacensis passage is a key exhibit for the argument that philosophical proof of God produces a dead God.
Žižek was reading it 'to do some piece of criticism' but finds Hayek's argument about market arbitrariness preserving freedom 'wonderfully dialectical' even while opposing the politics.
Zeus's complaint that gods die when men stop praying is used to illustrate the Lacanian point that God ex-ists only through belief; Žižek says he 'always loves this position.'
Described as 'still in manuscript' and by his 'friend Adam Kotsko from Chicago'; extensively quoted for the concepts of creepiness, the social order's own creepiness, and hysteria.
The opening credits, combining Cash's song with zombie footage, are used to link the theology of Armageddon with the zombie horror genre.
Cited in the Q&A discussion of drive vs. desire and sublimation: the essay shows desire returning as the analyst's desire even after the drive has been analyzed.
Dunham's use of nudity is read (via Kotsko) as an example of the hysterical enigma that deactivates the standard codes of titillation.
Milestones (Qutb) book
Žižek reads a long passage to illustrate the paradox that total servitude to God grounds radical egalitarianism; he explicitly does not endorse Qutb's politics.
Žižek argues the Seminar on Transference moves beyond Antigone's 'pure desire' via Sygne de Coufontaine's tic, the no that exceeds desire.
People invoked 42
Franz Kafka positive
Kafka is mentioned as an antecedent for the vision of an evil God even if real, 'I'm not original here. Kafka says this.'
Primo Levi positive
If This Is a Man is cited for its harrowing description of the Auschwitz selection, which Žižek parallels with the structure of the Last Judgment.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
Mentioned as a friend who developed the insight about envy as the fatal weak point of Rawls's theory of justice; tells the anecdote about Dupuy presenting this objection to Rawls.
Adam Kotsko positive
Žižek draws extensively on Kotsko's manuscript 'Creepiness' (described as his 'friend Adam Kotsko from Chicago') for the concepts of creepiness, the social order's own creepiness, and hysteria as creeping out the social order.
Marquis de Sade positive
The enigma of Sade is not his content (which Žižek finds boring and formulaic) but his compulsion to write, the death drive manifesting beyond any sexual object; Lacan's reading of this is endorsed.
Žižek was reading The Road to Serfdom for a piece of criticism; finds Hayek's argument about the market as unconditional arbitrary authority 'wonderfully dialectical' even while opposing his politics.
Marcus Aurelius negative
Žižek says 'I hate him'; his deflationary technique of imagining the material reality beneath idealized objects (sex as glands and slime) is criticised as ideology, not liberation, the same move as cynical realism.
Georg Lukács positive
The young Lukács and History and Class Consciousness are cited for demonstrating that theory and practice are not opposed, and for the concept of proletarian self-consciousness as the greatest practical act.
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Adorno's insight that the most difficult task today is authentic passivity rather than pseudo-activity is endorsed; his critique of interactive art prefigured today's commodified participatory culture.
Rey Chow positive
Chinese cultural theorist at Duke (working with Jameson); wrote a text showing how the Brechtian Verfremdung strategy now serves contemporary cynical ideology; Žižek calls it 'wonderful.'
Hal Foster negative
Žižek mentions The Return of the Real (attributed tentatively to Foster) in order to argue that the Brechtian strategy of exposing the production process is not a return to but an escape from the Real.
Jacques Lacan positive
Central theoretical framework throughout: big Other, objet a, God is unconscious/dead, hysteria vs perversion, desire of the analyst; Žižek repeatedly invokes Lacan to structure his arguments.
John Rawls negative
His theory of justice is criticized for failing to account for envy as a fundamental factor; Žižek argues that Rawlsian conditions (merit-based inequality with trickle-down benefit) would produce catastrophic envy.
Described as a 'really interesting actor' who played the mouth in Beckett's Not I and the mother in Hitchcock's The Birds, and stars in the Glass Eye episode.
Louis Althusser positive
Interpellation theory is invoked as the dominant ideological mechanism to which hysteria is the necessary supplement.
Žižek finds genuine egalitarian logic in Qutb's Milestones and engages it seriously, but does not subscribe to it and notes the failure to extend the logic to gender equality; he reads Qutb as a limit-case illustration of the authority/freedom dialectic.
Patricia Highsmith positive
Her first published story about the babysitter who burns the house to rescue the children is deployed as the structural model for Malebranche's perverse God.
Lena Dunham positive
Her use of nudity in Girls is used (via Kotsko) as an example of the hysterical enigma, doing something but not for any obvious reason, as opposed to perverse self-enclosure.
Damien Hirst negative
Used as an example of fashionable contemporary art Žižek despises; in his 'Stalinist universe' Hirst would get a one-way ticket to Siberia.
Nicolas Malebranche positive
Cited as a Cartesian Christian thinker who develops the idea of a narcissistic God who loves only himself and uses humans to propagate his glory, Žižek uses this to support his argument about the dark tradition within Christianity.
Mentioned by an audience member asking about practice and Marxism; Žižek doesn't engage MacIntyre directly but uses the question to develop his view on theory versus practice.
John Milbank positive
Drew Žižek's attention to the Aristotle Metaphysics passage on slaves acting at random versus free men following duty.
See above; duplication removed, entry kept under Jameson.
Žižek has a 'friendly slight disagreement' with Assange: Assange assumes people need to be informed of surveillance etc., while Žižek's 'cynical view' is most people already know roughly what is going on.
Bertolt Brecht negative
The Brechtian learning play and Verfremdungseffekt are criticized: Brecht's plays never reached their intended working-class audience (the Berliner Ensemble ran on West German tourist money), and the distanciation strategy has been absorbed by cynical capitalist ideology.
Mladen Dolar positive
Slovenian Lacanian colleague and part of Žižek's 'Slovene Lacanian gang'; credited with developing the connection between hysteria and Althusserian interpellation, and with the observation about which philosophers actually didn't want to change the world.
Johnny Cash positive
'The Man Comes Around' is cited as discerning traces of the authentic dark Protestant vision of God as capricious terror; Žižek calls this a 'wonderful' song.
Benjamin Netanyahu negative
Cited as an example of 'true racism today', not direct insult but the condescending form 'Islam is a great religion but their food smells bad.'
Hans Magnus Enzensberger negative
Modernist leftist cultural theorist who saw early interactive media as a way for passive consumers to become active co-creators; Žižek contrasts this with Adorno's more accurate diagnosis.
Rowan Williams positive
The Archbishop's book (on Dostoevsky) is cited for the view that what makes someone religious is not a positive vision of God but a fundamental sense of displacement and that something is wrong, which Žižek endorses as his own reading of negative theology.
Darian Leader positive
British Lacanian analyst who told Žižek the 'bed for two' clinical anecdote; used to illustrate the object-cause of desire.
Bill Gates negative
Used as an example of the ideology of charity and practical 'just do something' activism that substitutes for structural critique of capitalism.
Søren Kierkegaard positive
The Concept of Anxiety's mockery of Simon Tornacensis is used to develop the argument that a philosophically proven God is already a dead God; Kierkegaard's incarnation theology is also discussed.
Alfred Hitchcock positive
The episode 'The Glass Eye' from Alfred Hitchcock Presents is a key example for the ventriloquist-reversal structure applied to the Christian Father/Son relationship.
Aristotle positive
The Metaphysics passage on slaves acting at random while free men follow duty is used to illuminate the dialectic of formal freedom and real enslavement; despite the passage's problems Žižek finds 'a grain of truth in it.'
Noam Chomsky negative
Chomsky made the first move by attacking Žižek in a radio interview; Žižek responded with a respectful text but argues Chomsky lacks genuine ideology critique, he exposes lies but doesn't ask what sincere beliefs enable them. Žižek notes they are now mentioned together supporting Snowden.
Karl Marx positive
Marx's panicked letter to Engels about revolution arriving before Capital was finished is the 'authentic Marx' Žižek endorses; also the 11th thesis on Feuerbach is deconstructed.
Paul the Apostle positive
Pauline love suspending the law is mentioned as the Christian move beyond Judaism's law, but Žižek argues this suspension has a dark underside in Protestant arbitrary predestination.
Sigmund Freud positive
Freud's observations on perversion (the unconscious most inaccessible there), hysteria, the drive, and the Unheimliche are central touchstones throughout.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Hegel's refusal to prescribe how to change the world is identified as what makes him the most valuable revolutionary source; his dialectics underlie the entire lecture.
Immanuel Kant positive
Mentioned as the destination to which Aristotle's notion of duty as making one free points forward.
Peter Wessel Zapffe positive
Norwegian theologian whose 1930s reading of Job emphasizes God's qualitative baseness rather than greatness; Žižek calls this the most radical reading of Job.
What it argues
atheism that rejects God even if God is realthe narcissistic and evil God in Christian and Jewish traditionpredestination as divine terror and arbitrary Last Judgmentcreepiness, the uncanny neighbor, and the object-cause of desireperversion as inherent transgression versus hysteria as genuine subversionborderline disorder as contemporary hysteria under permissive ideologyenvy, communism, and the injustice of capitalism as social glue
Dialectical moves 12
“Even if God exists, he is evil — and only by renouncing a real but evil God do we truly destroy the fiction of God from within.”
The standard atheist disavowal ('God is a noble illusion') is insufficient; authentic rejection requires refusing God even on the premise of his existence.
“The dark lesson of Protestantism is: if you want God you have to renounce divine goodness.”
Calvinism's arbitrary predestination reveals the true cost of omnipotence, a God who is not good but capricious or evil.
“Far from being a utopian point forever postponed, the Last Judgment happens — but as a horrible travesty of itself.”
Against Derridean deferral, Žižek insists the problem is not that justice never arrives but that it arrives as the selekcja: arbitrary, undignified, unrelated to inner worth.
“It is precisely its injustice that makes capitalism liveable — the very injustice of the market is what prevents envy from exploding.”
Market unfairness is not capitalism's flaw but its psychological mechanism of social cohesion, allowing losers to attribute failure to luck.
“The pervert has no point; it is the hysteric who is uniquely positioned to see this.”
Contrary to 1960s fashion, hysteria, not perversion, is the genuinely subversive stance because the hysteric perceives that transgression is the social order's own demand.
“Nowhere is the unconscious more inaccessible than in perversion — the very opposite of what one would expect.”
Freud's counterintuitive point: the pervert who 'brings it all out' is the most closed to the unconscious; his act is self-enclosed and requires no interpretation.
“Hegel did not want to change the world — and that is precisely why he was the most valuable source for actual revolutionary practice.”
The appearance of pure theory (Hegel refusing all practical blueprints) is the condition for the deepest practical effect; willing to change the world gets in the way of really changing it.
“What you thought was the puppet was the real person, and the big real person was the puppet.”
The Hitchcock 'Glass Eye' reversal applied to Christianity: Christ appears to speak for the Father, but the Father is a dead doll, there is only Christ/the community of believers.
“God fears that the proof of his existence will fail — but he fears even more that the proof will not fail.”
The successful philosophical proof of God produces a dead God: confirmed existence is worse than non-existence because it reduces God to a constituted object.
“The form of our hyperactivity today is precisely the form of our inability to change anything — we reproduce the status quo through pseudo-activity.”
The dialectic of activity and passivity: hyper-activism is the contemporary mode of passivity; authentic change requires stepping back.
“Brutal cynical realism — 'cut the crap, take things the way they are' — is the ultimate ideological naivety.”
The Marcus Aurelius move of deflating idealized objects to their material base (sex as bodily mechanics, beauty as future decay) is not an escape from illusion but an escape from the Real.
“In total servitude to God lies the condition for universal human freedom and equality.”
Following Qutb and Aristotle, complete submission to an unconditional external authority paradoxically generates radical egalitarianism among humans, since no human can lord over another.
Claims 22
asserts
Authentic atheism requires rejecting God even if God actually exists and is real, not merely because God is a fiction.atheism and the critique of God
asserts
Sharon's refusal to declare love for God in 'The Rapture' is a genuine ethical act, not a symptom of crisis of faith.ethics and theology
asserts
The dark lesson of Protestantism is that to have an omnipotent God you must renounce divine goodness; predestination reveals a capricious, potentially evil God.Protestantism and divine omnipotence
asserts
The Last Judgment is not a utopian point forever postponed but happens as a horrible travesty of itself — structurally analogous to the arbitrary Auschwitz selekcja.Last Judgment and divine arbitrariness
asserts
The resurrection of Christ and the authentic Christian notion of bodily return is properly obscene horror, not spiritual transcendence.Christian resurrection theology
asserts
Religions or theological schools that preach total human subordination to God tend paradoxically to sustain projects of radical egalitarian emancipation.religion and political emancipation
rejects
Qutb's radical egalitarianism is undermined by his inability to extend the logic of free choice to sex/gender.Sayyid Qutb's political theology
asserts
Hayek, Aristotle, and Qutb all share the insight that genuine equality and freedom require an unconditional external authority above individuals.authority, freedom, and equality
asserts
Capitalism is made psychologically liveable precisely by its injustice, which allows losers to blame luck rather than their own inferiority, thereby defusing envy.capitalism and envy
rejects
Rawls's theory of justice fails because it assumes envy is not a fundamental factor; once conditions make envy inescapable, his model breaks down.Rawls's theory of justice
rejects
Jameson's 'American Utopia' militarized-communism vision does not work because it conflates an army with a welfare institution and avoids the question of who controls it.Fredric Jameson's American Utopia
asserts
Perversion is an inherent transgression that sustains the law rather than subverting it; no legal order is possible without its obscene underside.perversion and the law
asserts
Hysteria, not perversion, is the properly subversive attitude because the hysteric perceives that direct transgression merely reproduces the system.hysteria vs. perversion as political attitudes
asserts
Borderline disorder is today's name for hysteria, the form it takes when the traditional master is replaced by the neutral expert and the injunction is to have it all.borderline and contemporary hysteria
rejects
Chomsky lacks a genuine critique of ideology because he only exposes lies and hypocrisy without asking what sincere beliefs enable such lying in the first place.Noam Chomsky's political analysis
rejects
The Brechtian/Verfremdung strategy of aesthetic distanciation has been fully absorbed by cynical capitalist ideology and no longer functions as subversion.Brechtian distanciation as political art
asserts
Practice without theory is the worst conformism; the first step toward authentic practice is theory, not practical engagement that avoids thinking.theory versus practice in Marxism
asserts
Hegel, unlike virtually all other philosophers, did not want to change the world, which is precisely why he was the most valuable source for actual revolutionary practice.Hegel and revolutionary practice
asserts
The proof of God's existence is itself the proof of a dead God: the God confirmed by philosophical proof is like a monarch made absolute by parliamentary vote — the form of confirmation undermines the content.philosophical proofs of God's existence
asserts
The creepiness of a neighbor lies not in their strange acts but in the impenetrability of the desire that sustains those acts.creepiness and the neighbor
rejects
Contemporary art Biennales, despite their anti-Eurocentric and politically critical self-presentation, are perfectly integrated into the world art marketplace and change nothing.contemporary political art and Biennales
asserts
The hyper-activity of contemporary society is precisely the form of passivity by which we reproduce the status quo; authentic passivity is today's most difficult achievement.activity, passivity, and social change
Quotes 20
“Even if there is God he is evil.”Slavoj Žižek · authentic atheism requires rejecting a real but evil God
“The true temptation to be resisted is to declare our love for a God who doesn't deserve it even if he is real.”Slavoj Žižek · ethics of refusing God's demand for love
“If you want God you have to renounce divine goodness.”Slavoj Žižek · dark lesson of Protestantism and predestination
“The truly subversive reading of Last Judgment is not some pseudo-Derridean deconstruction... No the problem is it happens but as a horrible travesty of itself.”Slavoj Žižek · Last Judgment as actual arbitrary horror, not deferred justice
“Jesus of Christianity is himself the ultimate profane obscenity, the ultimate returning horror. Not a ghost but reanimated flesh crawled out from the grave.”Slavoj Žižek · resurrection as zombie horror, Christ as uncanny
“As Lacan put it long ago God is dead but doesn't know that he is dead. That's why he lives.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacan's formula for the persistence of God in ideology
“In Christianity only God learns that he is dead.”Slavoj Žižek · Christianity as the religion that kills the big Other
“God is a name for what — the divine is the creepy dimension in ourselves.”Slavoj Žižek · God as name for the uncanny kernel of subjectivity
“What makes the sleazy guy creepy is not that he is simply asking too many women out but that his constant failure seems to indicate that he doesn't care that his methods are ineffective.”Slavoj Žižek · creepiness as enjoyment that bypasses the ostensible goal
“No human rights without Guantanamo.”Slavoj Žižek · inherent transgression: liberal rights require an obscene underside
“Nowhere is the unconscious more inaccessible, excluded, than in perversion.”Slavoj Žižek · paradox of perversion: most closed where one expects most open
“The hysteric is uniquely positioned to see that the pervert has no point.”Slavoj Žižek · hysteria as genuine subversion versus perversion's complicity
“Borderline is precisely desire on strike as the contemporary form of hysteria.”Slavoj Žižek · borderline disorder as today's hysteria under permissive injunction
“The form of how we are unable to change anything is precisely because through our hyperactivity we reproduce the way things are.”Slavoj Žižek · pseudo-activity as the contemporary mode of passivity and conformism
“The most difficult thing today is not to be active but to be authentically passive.”Slavoj Žižek · authentic passivity as Adornian resistance in hyperactive society
“Ideology at its most radical is part of your daily practice. You live ideology in your daily life.”Slavoj Žižek · Althusserian ideology as embedded in practice, not just false belief
“The worst conformism is blind practice and not to be blind in practice you need theory.”Slavoj Žižek · theory as condition of authentic practice
“The enigma of ideology is not we all know this that people lie all the time. But what do you have to believe sincerely in order to lie like that?”Slavoj Žižek · ideology critique: sincere belief beneath cynical lying
“It is this very freedom — just you follow your natural inclinations — which makes slaves slaves.”Slavoj Žižek · formal freedom as the mark of enslavement
“My God it's quite incredible what he says here. It's quite a radical egalitarianism.”Slavoj Žižek · Žižek's surprised recognition of egalitarianism in Qutb
Transcript 60 turns
Slavoj Žižek
Okay so we'll do this as I told you yesterday. Now you will get the last minutes of Rapture. You remember if you were here yesterday. Okay, just press the button. That's it. Up to this point the movie was normal reality.
Okay so we'll do this as I told you yesterday. Now you will get the last minutes of Rapture. You remember if you were here yesterday. Okay, just press the button. That's it. Up to this point the movie was normal reality.
unknown
God is coming back mommy. There are wars and rumors of wars mommy. And a curse devours the earth and those who live in it are held guilty. He said he would take us to heaven. Mother listen to me. The living outnumber the dead. The armies of the lord are waiting for the day of judgment. Don't you still love God mommy? He left us alone. Alone in the desert he let me kill
God is coming back mommy. There are wars and rumors of wars mommy. And a curse devours the earth and those who live in it are held guilty. He said he would take us to heaven. Mother listen to me. The living outnumber the dead. The armies of the lord are waiting for the day of judgment. Don't you still love God mommy? He left us alone. Alone in the desert he let me kill
unknown
you. But
you. But
unknown
do you still love him?
do you still love him?
unknown
How can I love a God that let me kill my baby? God loves you
How can I love a God that let me kill my baby? God loves you
unknown
because you love him. Why? I know you want me back but I can't come back mommy. I'm dead. That's the first call. It's Gabriel blowing his trumpet. There'll be six more calls. We have until the last call to repent. After that it's too late. It's God. He's giving us a last chance to save ourselves. That's war. The first horseman of the apocalypse. What more do you need? Get out of here. What
because you love him. Why? I know you want me back but I can't come back mommy. I'm dead. That's the first call. It's Gabriel blowing his trumpet. There'll be six more calls. We have until the last call to repent. After that it's too late. It's God. He's giving us a last chance to save ourselves. That's war. The first horseman of the apocalypse. What more do you need? Get out of here. What
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are you doing here? I want to know what happens next. Are you scared? I don't know. I never had any faith but you did. Yep. So. So. Well if the world is coming to an end this isn't the place to be. Let's go. Mom. Hi mom. Is this her? Not Mary. Is that your daughter? Mary where are you? I'm here. Where are we? You know when you hear those songs about the river that washes away all your sins? Well here it is. We're in heaven. Why aren't we in heaven? We're not in heaven. Heaven's over there. I can't see it. It's there. If you love God it's there. Foster, do you love God for giving you the gift of life? Yes. No. Tell him Mary. Gabriel is coming. You have to make up your mind. There's nothing more to say. You have to love God. I love you Mary.
are you doing here? I want to know what happens next. Are you scared? I don't know. I never had any faith but you did. Yep. So. So. Well if the world is coming to an end this isn't the place to be. Let's go. Mom. Hi mom. Is this her? Not Mary. Is that your daughter? Mary where are you? I'm here. Where are we? You know when you hear those songs about the river that washes away all your sins? Well here it is. We're in heaven. Why aren't we in heaven? We're not in heaven. Heaven's over there. I can't see it. It's there. If you love God it's there. Foster, do you love God for giving you the gift of life? Yes. No. Tell him Mary. Gabriel is coming. You have to make up your mind. There's nothing more to say. You have to love God. I love you Mary.
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That isn't
That isn't
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enough. Maybe it's all I have. If life is a gift, if it really is a gift and there really is a heaven. It really is a heaven. Then why should I thank him for the gift of so much suffering Mary? So much pain on the earth that he created. Let me ask him why. Tell God you love him. I can't. If you don't tell God that you love him you can't go to heaven. Tell God that you love him. Mommy. No. Do you see heaven?
enough. Maybe it's all I have. If life is a gift, if it really is a gift and there really is a heaven. It really is a heaven. Then why should I thank him for the gift of so much suffering Mary? So much pain on the earth that he created. Let me ask him why. Tell God you love him. I can't. If you don't tell God that you love him you can't go to heaven. Tell God that you love him. Mommy. No. Do you see heaven?
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Yes. Is it beautiful? Yes. Do you know how long you have to stay here? Yes. For eternity. Again let's avoid a misunderstanding. I said already yesterday I'm not claiming this is a great movie or whatever. I just admire the total madness of it. You know this total confusion precisely up to the point where the clip began. You think that it's just kind of a psychological drama whatever about a deceived believer and then you saw how it gets crazy. And what interests me is again this gesture which is I think important. Why? She, Sharon the heroine, persists in renouncing a God who is real but a narcissist, giving us life for the sole purpose of demanding unconditional love in return, no matter how much damage his demands have inflicted on human lives. Now if you think that this is just a case of extreme madness nothing to do with authentic theology, such indifferent narcissistic God is part of Christian tradition. For example for Nicolas
Yes. Is it beautiful? Yes. Do you know how long you have to stay here? Yes. For eternity. Again let's avoid a misunderstanding. I said already yesterday I'm not claiming this is a great movie or whatever. I just admire the total madness of it. You know this total confusion precisely up to the point where the clip began. You think that it's just kind of a psychological drama whatever about a deceived believer and then you saw how it gets crazy. And what interests me is again this gesture which is I think important. Why? She, Sharon the heroine, persists in renouncing a God who is real but a narcissist, giving us life for the sole purpose of demanding unconditional love in return, no matter how much damage his demands have inflicted on human lives. Now if you think that this is just a case of extreme madness nothing to do with authentic theology, such indifferent narcissistic God is part of Christian tradition. For example for Nicolas
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Malebranche, I mentioned him already I think the follower of Descartes, in the same way that the saintly person uses the suffering of others to bring about his own narcissistic satisfaction in helping those in distress, God also ultimately loves only himself and merely uses man to promulgate his own glory. Malebranche draws here a consequence worthy of Lacan's famous reversal of Dostoevsky: if God doesn't exist then nothing is permitted. It is not true that if Christ had not come to earth to redeem humanity everyone would have been lost. Quite the contrary. Nobody would have been lost. Every we all had to fall so that Christ could come and deliver some of us. You know you have here God is a pervert here in this theology. You have here the notions of God which fits often I mentioned it a wonderful short story of Patricia Highsmith. According to her biography this is even her first published story. I mentioned it a couple of times in my books. It's about a young girl who takes care of children in a family but she thinks that parents don't appreciate her work enough. So she burns the house just to be able to save the children so that you know that's what God is doing with us. That's the theory. So Sharon's resistance to God, her refusal to declare her love for God is I think an authentic ethical act. It would be totally wrong to say that she rejects the false God and that in an authentically Christian version of the film the true Christ should appear at the end, proclaim her a true believer and so on and so on. The true temptation to be resisted is to declare our love for a God who doesn't deserve it even if he is real. For a vulgar materialist all this cannot but appear again a pseudotopic, an empty mental experiment. However for a true materialist it is only in this way that what we really renounce God by way of renouncing him not only insofar as he doesn't really exist but even if he is real. Only in this way we destroy the fiction of God from within. Namely it is easy for this fiction to prolong its hold over us in the form of a disavowal like I know there is no God but he is nonetheless a noble uplifting illusion. No we should say the opposite. Even if there is God he is evil. I mean I'm not original here. Kafka says this. Many Gnostics got this point. So again what I'm trying to convince you and this is my very weird I know plea for Christianity and Judaism also is that I claim that this line of thought was from the very beginning part of the my God I don't like now to sound like Dan Brown but secret teaching of Christianity which was there. And it was there already in Judaism. You know I quoted it two times already I think in my books a wonderful story from Babylonian Talmud. It has two versions. Okay if you want the details there in my book the last one Absolute Recoil. It's the weirdest probably story
Malebranche, I mentioned him already I think the follower of Descartes, in the same way that the saintly person uses the suffering of others to bring about his own narcissistic satisfaction in helping those in distress, God also ultimately loves only himself and merely uses man to promulgate his own glory. Malebranche draws here a consequence worthy of Lacan's famous reversal of Dostoevsky: if God doesn't exist then nothing is permitted. It is not true that if Christ had not come to earth to redeem humanity everyone would have been lost. Quite the contrary. Nobody would have been lost. Every we all had to fall so that Christ could come and deliver some of us. You know you have here God is a pervert here in this theology. You have here the notions of God which fits often I mentioned it a wonderful short story of Patricia Highsmith. According to her biography this is even her first published story. I mentioned it a couple of times in my books. It's about a young girl who takes care of children in a family but she thinks that parents don't appreciate her work enough. So she burns the house just to be able to save the children so that you know that's what God is doing with us. That's the theory. So Sharon's resistance to God, her refusal to declare her love for God is I think an authentic ethical act. It would be totally wrong to say that she rejects the false God and that in an authentically Christian version of the film the true Christ should appear at the end, proclaim her a true believer and so on and so on. The true temptation to be resisted is to declare our love for a God who doesn't deserve it even if he is real. For a vulgar materialist all this cannot but appear again a pseudotopic, an empty mental experiment. However for a true materialist it is only in this way that what we really renounce God by way of renouncing him not only insofar as he doesn't really exist but even if he is real. Only in this way we destroy the fiction of God from within. Namely it is easy for this fiction to prolong its hold over us in the form of a disavowal like I know there is no God but he is nonetheless a noble uplifting illusion. No we should say the opposite. Even if there is God he is evil. I mean I'm not original here. Kafka says this. Many Gnostics got this point. So again what I'm trying to convince you and this is my very weird I know plea for Christianity and Judaism also is that I claim that this line of thought was from the very beginning part of the my God I don't like now to sound like Dan Brown but secret teaching of Christianity which was there. And it was there already in Judaism. You know I quoted it two times already I think in my books a wonderful story from Babylonian Talmud. It has two versions. Okay if you want the details there in my book the last one Absolute Recoil. It's the weirdest probably story
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of the Old Testament about two rabbis fighting over a theological question and unable to resolve it. One of them says I quote let heaven himself testify that the law is according to my judgment. Then a voice I yesterday
of the Old Testament about two rabbis fighting over a theological question and unable to resolve it. One of them says I quote let heaven himself testify that the law is according to my judgment. Then a voice I yesterday
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or before when I told you this story I changed it a little
or before when I told you this story I changed it a little
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bit. It's not that God appears but a voice from heaven says yes I
bit. It's not that God appears but a voice from heaven says yes I
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agree blah blah and then agree with one and then the other rabbi
agree blah blah and then agree with one and then the other rabbi
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who was losing the argument said You God did long ago write down in the law which you gave on Sinai: You shall follow the multitude. In other words we people collective decide you
who was losing the argument said You God did long ago write down in the law which you gave on Sinai: You shall follow the multitude. In other words we people collective decide you
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have nothing to say. And then God says
have nothing to say. And then God says
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my children have vanquished me, my
my children have vanquished me, my
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children have vanquished me and runs away and you have even
children have vanquished me and runs away and you have even
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again a different version and so on and so on. But what I want
again a different version and so on and so on. But what I want
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to emphasize here is that in precise Lacanian sense God is no longer the big other because it is decentered with regard to the big other, the order of symbolic registration. The big other is the domain of logical not logical in the strict rational sense but of symbolic reasoning, rabbis debating and so on and so on. And even God after giving us the law he now is not allowed any longer to mess with it. God himself is decentered
to emphasize here is that in precise Lacanian sense God is no longer the big other because it is decentered with regard to the big other, the order of symbolic registration. The big other is the domain of logical not logical in the strict rational sense but of symbolic reasoning, rabbis debating and so on and so on. And even God after giving us the law he now is not allowed any longer to mess with it. God himself is decentered
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with regard to the big other. What are again the theological consequences of this? Postmodern philosophers from Nietzsche
with regard to the big other. What are again the theological consequences of this? Postmodern philosophers from Nietzsche
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onwards as a rule prefer Catholicism to Protestantism. The idea is that
onwards as a rule prefer Catholicism to Protestantism. The idea is that
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Catholicism is a culture of external playful rituals in contrast to the inner sense of guilt and the pressure of authenticity that characterize Protestantism. I mean even in some art circles they like to say that okay traditional modernity is Protestant but postmodernity is Catholic again. Catholic in the sense of don't take
Catholicism is a culture of external playful rituals in contrast to the inner sense of guilt and the pressure of authenticity that characterize Protestantism. I mean even in some art circles they like to say that okay traditional modernity is Protestant but postmodernity is Catholic again. Catholic in the sense of don't take
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it too seriously it's more playful and so on and so on. We are allowed to
it too seriously it's more playful and so on and so on. We are allowed to
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just follow
just follow
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the
the
Slavoj Žižek
ritual to ignore the authenticity of our inner belief and so on and so on. However I think that this playfulness should not deceive us. Catholicism is resorting to such tricks to save the divine big other in his goodness while the capriciously irrational predestination in Protestantism confronts us with a God who is ultimately not good and all-powerful but stained by an indelible suspicion of being stupid, arbitrary or even outright evil. That is to say I think that the dark implicit lesson of Protestantism is if you want God you have to renounce divine goodness. Along this lines the most radical reading I quote it in my book of the Book of Job was proposed in 1930s by a Norwegian theologian Peter Wessel Zapffe who accentuated Job's boundless perplexity when God himself finally appears to him. Expecting a sacred and pure God whose intellect is infinitely superior to ours, Job I quote finds himself confronted with a world ruler of grotesque primitiveness, a cosmic cave dweller, a braggart and blusterer almost agreeable in his total ignorance of spiritual culture. What is new for Job is not God's greatness in quantifiable terms, that he knew fully in advance. What is new is God's qualitative baseness. End of quote. And I claim again another reference to a song that I mentioned already in my books, one can discern the traces of this full acceptance of God's unconditional capricious authority in the last song Johnny Cash recorded just before his death, "The Man Comes Around." It's a very weird song about Armageddon, the end of days when God will appear and perform the Last Judgment. And this event is presented in this song as pure arbitrary terror. God almost appears as evil personified, as a kind of political informer, a man who comes around and provokes consternation by taking names, by deciding you are saved you are lost and so on in totally arbitrary way. If anything Cash's description evokes the well-known scene of people lined up for a brutal interrogation and then an informer pointing out those selected for torture. There is no mercy, no pardon, no jubilation. We are all fixed in our roles. As Johnny Cash says the just remain just, the filthy remain filthy. Even worse in this divine proclamation we are not simply judged in a just way, we are informed from outside as if learning about an arbitrary decision that we were righteous or sinners, that we are saved or condemned. This decision has nothing to do with our inner qualities. And again this dark excess of the ruthless divine sadism, excess over the image of a severe but nonetheless just God is I claim a necessary negative an underside of Christian love. Love which suspends the law is necessary accompanied by a arbitrary cruelty which also suspends the law. What do we mean by this? Let me I think already again mentioned it but nonetheless again let me quote you here a brief passage from Primo Levi, If This Is a Man, where he Primo Levi his Auschwitz memoirs, where he describes the dreadful procedure of the term used in the camp was selekcja, Polish selection, the survival examination in the camp. Quote each one of us as he comes naked out of the daily room into the cold October air has to run the few steps between the two doors, give the card to the SS man and enter the dormitory door. The SS man, the doctor, in the fraction of a second between two successive crossings, with a glance at once back and front judges everyone's fate and in turn gives the card to the man on his right or his left and this is the life or death for each of us. In three or four minutes a hut of men is done, as is the whole camp of men in the course of an afternoon. End of quote. So right means survival, left means gas chamber. Is there not something properly comic in this ridiculous spectacle? Because as Primo Levi reports how you know before running just for a second to be observed in front of the SS doctor prisoners tried of course to create an impression that they are still vital enough, healthy enough. So they shared all the tricks how if you pinch your lips a little bit or whatever you will appear more alive. It's a comedy again but a crazy comedy. And what I want to draw your attention to is how again the parallel between this scene, maybe one of the most terrifying scenes sorry not scene like scene but scene like picture from Primo Levi I strictly think that there is a parallel between this and the Last Judgment. I think that the truly subversive reading of Last Judgment is not some kind of a pseudo-Derridean deconstruction in the sense yes we should maintain the hope that at some point at the end you know there will be an honest judgment where the truly good ones will be redeemed and so on and so on. No the problem is not this judgment is a utopian point forever postponed. No the problem is it happens but as a horrible travesty of itself. The final judgment is as sorry as some commentators noted the reasoning God decides who to free and who to blame. Those who believe in Jesus will be saved and will escape punishment but the problem is precisely this that this judgment is inconsistent. If our salvation depends on our belief in Jesus then Jesus doesn't have in God then he doesn't have to make any decision but just to follow the insight. But I claim it's crucial that in this staging of Last Judgment the idea the formulation is God decides. It's a totally arbitrary procedure. That's I think again the deepest insight of predestination is that it doesn't matter what you do. God God decides from outside in a totally arbitrary way. This God from the song by John Cash is effectively a God of terror. Terror not just in the sense of the arbitrariness of predestination and the nightmareish quality of the Last Judgment but even at the more visceral level indicated by a passage from Matthew Gospel which is also I noticed as a rule ignored by the Christian tradition. Just listen. Here is how Matthew describes the redemptive death of Christ. Quote from Matthew Jesus when he had cried again with a loud voice yielded up the ghost and the earth did quake and the rocks rent and the graves were opened and many bodies of the saints which slept arose and came out of the graves after his resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many. End of quote. We can easily see from these lines why in the opening credits of the remake of the famous undead horror movie Dawn of the Dead, Johnny Cash's song accompanies a documentary mixture of news reports and home videos in order to provide a quick exposition of a zombie outbreak gone global and catastrophic. The reason Jesus of Christianity is himself I claim the ultimate profane obscenity, the ultimate returning horror. Not a ghost but reanimated flesh crawled out from the grave three days rotten demanding that we slide our finger along into his filthy wounds demanding if translators were more honest with the original Greek that we chomp down on his flesh and guzzle his blood. The authentic Christian notion of resurrection I think should be totally cleansed of this obscene topic. What God is love means is to quote John no one has ever seen God but if we love one another God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. End of quote. So what I'm saying you see is that all that topic that you add above this God is Holy Spirit is for me where the Bible meets horror movies obscenity. I mean I think we should do precisely this dirty imagining and imagine rising of the dead as a scene from a horror movie you know all those creepy deads slowly moving towards us and so on and so on. Next point I want nonetheless to complicate things a little bit namely this motive of man's total subordination to God. Total subordination in the sense that it's predestination we cannot do not have any freedom of choice everything is decided in advance far from necessarily sustaining a vision of slavery and subordination can also sustain a project of universal emancipation. It's interesting how precisely those religions or those schools orientations within a religion which preached man's total subordination to God usually had an agenda of egalitarian emancipation. So now comes my surprise but I'm not the one who supports this guy in any way. Let me read you I hope it will not be too boring a long quote from you know who is Sayyid Qutb, the so-called philosopher of Al-Qaeda as the Western media call him? No in no way do I subscribe to what he is saying. Nonetheless I would like to read you a longer passage from his Milestones where he in a nice theological way nonetheless deploys the link between universal freedom and human servitude to God. Just listen to this rather long quote. Quote A society in which sovereignty belongs exclusively to Allah and finds expression in its obedience to the divine law and every person is set free from servitude to others only then does it taste true freedom. This alone is human civilization because the basis of human civilization is the complete and true freedom of every person and the full dignity of every individual in the community. On the other hand in a society in which some people are lords who legislate and others are slaves who obey them there is no freedom in the real sense nor dignity for the individual. It is necessary to understand the point that legislation is not limited only to legal matters since some people do in fact assign this narrow meaning to the Sharia. The fact is that attitudes, the way of living, values, criteria, habits and traditions are all legislated and affect people. If a particular group of people forges all these chains to imprison others in them it will not be a free society. In such a society some people have the position of authority while others are subservient to them. This society will be backward. An Islamic society is unique insofar as in it authority belongs to Allah alone and man freeing himself from servitude to other human beings serves only Allah attaining real and complete freedom. The focus of human civilization to this society human dignity and honor are sacrosanct in the law prescribed by Allah. Man as the vice-regent of Allah on earth attains a position even higher than that of the angels. In a society based on the concept belief and way of life originating from Allah man's dignity is held inviolable to the highest degree. No one is a slave to another as they are in societies in which the concepts beliefs and way of life originate from human sources. In the former society, Islamic society, man's noblest characteristics both spiritual and intellectual find fullest expression while in a society based on color race nationalism or other similar bases this degenerates into fetters for human thought and a means for suppressing nobler human attributes and qualities. All men are equal regardless of their color race or nation. But when they are deprived of spirit and reason they are also divested of their humanity. Man is able to change his beliefs thinking and attitude toward life but he is incapable of changing his color and race nor can he decide in what place or nation he is to be born. Thus it is clear that a society is civilized only to the extent that human associations are based on a community of free moral choice and a society is backward insofar as the basis of association is something other than free choice. My God it's quite incredible what he says here. It's quite a radical egalitarianism. Okay now of course comes my evil mind. Did you notice how when he lists all these features into which we are born which are not our free choice color race nation and so on, aye-aye-aye one is missing: sex gender, no? If he were to be consequent he should have added to this series sex but of course he cannot. Namely again his problem is why does a free society not include the full equality of men and women? Precisely because to be a man or a woman okay maybe with all the sex operations today but at least in majority of our societies for most of us your gender is not a matter of your free choice. Quick underlying premise is that insofar as we humans act freely in the sense of just spontaneously following our natural inclinations we are not really free but enslaved to our human sorry animal natures. And it's interesting how I owe this to John Milbank who drew my attention to this passage in Aristotle how we find this same line of reasoning already in Aristotle who referring to slavery as an example to illustrate a general ontological feature, this is from Aristotle's Metaphysics Book he wrote that left to themselves slave are free in the sense that they just do what they want while free men follow their duty. It is this very freedom just you follow your natural inclinations which makes slaves slaves. A quote from Aristotle: All things are ordered together somehow but not all are alike. Both fishes and fowls and plants and the world is not such that one thing has nothing to do with another but they are all connected for all are ordered together to one end. But it is as in a house where the free men are least at liberty to act at random all things or most things are already ordained for them while slaves and animals do little for the common good and for the most part live at random for this is the sort of principle that constitutes the nature of each. End of quote. So in spite of all that is problematic in this passage there is I think a grain of truth in it. That is to say does this characterization of slaves not provide a good determination of today's what we usually refer to as consumerist slavery where I am allowed to act at random and do what I want but precisely as such I remain enslaved to the universe of commodity to how I am stimulated from the commodities? So again the underlying idea here is that precisely when you are formally free in the sense of you do what you want you are truly enslaved and that only by subordinating yourself to some kind of higher authority for Qutb God for Aristotle your inner sense of duty are you in a deeper sense free. Of course we can see how they diverge. Aristotle's advantage from our standpoint is that he refers just to the sense of ethical duty which makes you free in a way which of course points forward towards Kant. But the advantage of Qutb is that for him freedom is also social and economic, radical freedom. There is no slavery. Radical freedom and equality in social matters. And what fascinated me so much is that recently I was reading to do some piece of criticism a text by that Road to Serfdom by Hayek, you know that Hayek and he says strangely exactly the same thing only instead of God or inner duty the absolute master that he imposes is a market. And again it's a wonderful very dialectical line of thought where he says if we don't have an unconditional and arbitrary authority above us which decides our fate and it's basically out of our control again it's arbitrary not just without this unconditional external authority we necessarily regress to serfdom. His idea is this one that it's precisely this idea you play on the market you never know because it doesn't depend on you how your what will be the result of your interventions, you may be very rational prudent but nonetheless because of some irrational market movements you lose everything or whatever. His point is that precisely because of this you remain free in a way and he has another line of thought which I also find very instructive especially in view of what we don't have time to go into it of what Fred Jameson is now developing and he is universally almost rejected for this developing as his American Utopia I think already mentioned it if not the last time before when I was here. You know Fred Jameson now did an intervention a text now I have it it's a full text called An American Utopia and he tries to reply to the question like after all the bullshit that we had all the failures how can we even imagine an alternative communist society? And he does something which as you may suspect appeals to me because it's totally crazy. His first premise is that it should be a militarized society, universal conscription. All society should be and you know how he writes there how he came to this idea? He told me when he was young he remembers in '51 or '52 the debate between Eisenhower and I forgot Adlai Stevenson I think who was the Democratic and Democratic candidate for president Adlai Stevenson advocated what Obama tries to do today: universal healthcare. And Eisenhower's reply as a general was if you want free state organized universal healthcare join the army. And now Fred's idea is okay fuck it let's do it you know. Then he was thinking further and said that the army is the only big remaining welfare institution in United States. You know it finances healthcare is covered, it finances your education, it provides housing and so on and so on. So his idea is why not universalize the model of the army? And he goes pretty far here. He is even ready to admit that this means a great loss of economic efficiency and also you lose at least the absolute freedom to choose your job. Of course the problem is there are problems with his vision. I don't think it works. No no no not because I'm secretly a liberal or whatever. The problem is the following one for me. He is not honest enough because if you look closely at what he expects from the army it's just a kind of a centralized state-run economic regulation. Why then call it army? Army is war nonetheless. So it's an impossible dream. He wants an army which doesn't do war but just like and he says then what he he confronts this problem why army and his answer is that okay army has to have war but we have enough past heroes we celebrate there we play all this mocking game but we don't do war. Ah it doesn't work that's my first point problem. Second point is that he totally avoids the question which is maybe a naive liberal question but nonetheless okay it's nice to paint this image of some kind of a centralized army institution which locates jobs and so on we are all secure but I'm sorry for these liberal sounding words but who will run the army? Who will choose the generals and so on? He totally avoids this question but he has another good point which is which brings me back to Hayek. His point and here I like Fred, his point is that the biggest problem in communism even if we imagine it and I think this is a deep truth. It he does the same same thing as I tried to do apropos God like let's imagine an evil God no? So instead of claiming communism is impossible let's think honestly how would it have looked even if it's impossible but if somehow we were able to imagine it. And here I like it he is still a great guy. He totally rejects this stupidity that somehow envy competition is a bourgeois phenomenon, phenomenon market competitiveness and that in communism we would have a much more collaborative mood, I mean I help you your welfare is my happiness and so on. He said no capitalism can manage this by making competitiveness envy socially productive in some way but he says the big problem which can even ruin communism will be envy, that this will be the mega problem. Why? And here I will make a link with Hayek. You remember how I mentioned this insight of Hayek that capitalism works precisely because it is unjust? And an old motive I maybe even repeated it here already, it's very clear to Hayek that the injustice of capitalism far from making it unacceptable it's what make it function because it prevents envy from exploding. Let us say I am let us say we live in capitalism I and you I don't know who we are both capitalists, you succeed I fail. But my failure is to me from the standpoint of my narcissism much easier to accept if I can tell myself fuck it that idiot was just lucky we know market is unjust and so on. Can you imagine how traumatic would it have been to admit that you succeeded on the market because you are simply much better more intelligent and so on? Because then I have no escape. So again it's the very injustice of it which makes capitalism liveable, in the sense that we oh he was just lucky the jerk and so on in the sense of controlling all this. This is why I repeat my old line but it's important. This is why my friend Dupuy whom I mentioned a lot yesterday also developed how this is the weak point of John Rawls' theory of justice, no? It only works if envy is not a fundamental factor. You know to simplify it to the utmost Rawls' theory of justice: you are allowed to be rich, I mean to get rich to earn more only if A) two conditions and they are catastrophic I think, A) if your getting wealthier also helps a little bit those who are lower than you, so that you can say it's not just me getting more wealthy everyone even the lowest on the social ladder profit. And second point that you get wealthy not simply by inheriting it and so on but by your own hard work. But I think this is the formula for disaster. Can you imagine how people would envy each other the poor the rich because you again you would not have an excuse you see this is the injustice of capitalism and so on. It would explode in violence and Dupuy told me that when he proposed to Rawls this line of counter-argumentation and they knew each other because Dupuy was even correcting editing the French translation of Theory of Justice that Rawls was pretty shattered and basically just refused it: No I cannot even imagine this I don't accept it and so on. He admitted Rawls that with envy it's over. With envy his vision of of justice no longer works. I think so again Fred Jameson has this wonderful crazy vision of you know like my evil God: Yes communism but it will be hell because people will just envy each other and then comes the total madness where I think again things doesn't work with Fred Jameson. He another thing that I like with him is you know usually people imagine communism as big unification, you no longer have alienation between public private life between I don't know work and culture and so on. He says no only in communism the two will be clearly absolutely separated. You will have your domain of work where as a good soldier state will tell you you do this of course for only two three days a week couple of hours and then you are free for culture and pleasures. But again the problem being pleasures and culture envy explodes there. So what to do in an ultimate move of madness Jameson and he is not it's not clear at least to me I will see him next week and I will ask him. He proposes a kind of obligatory state-financed psychoanalytic institutes whose main function will be to cure you of envy, you know to you know like I can imagine how naively he thinks that you know you go there I envy my brother he got to screw that beautiful lady and they explain to you no as Lacan said your desire is the desire of the other don't you see the desire I I I think I think again I think that it radically doesn't work. And of course as I made it from this the point is how far should we follow this logic Aristotle Qutb and so on. Is it to what extent does egalitarian society imply a radical some radical unquestionable authority like again thinkers as different can you imagine more different thinkers like Qutb Aristotle and and Hayek? But again they all have this point: to be equal and free you need an absolute external authority. Without this hierarchy and authority emerges among people. Okay let me nonetheless return to return to Christianity. Is this the last word of Christianity? I think no of course you pass through. What I want to say is just this. We have Judaism with the law, divine law which is supposed to be just and so on. Then Christianity suspends the law through the work of love, you know all the Pauline I mean Saint Paul's stuff love love suspending the law. But what Protestant saw very well is that this suspension of the law should not be just in this beautiful Christian traditionally Christian external way, you know no love law is not the ultimate authority there is this beautiful excess of love pardon mercy and so on that no law have to be superseded also from within that when you move to love as the external supplement to the law the price you pay is the law itself becomes this law of predestination totally arbitrary crazy law and so on and so on. It's a serious insight. But let me go on. So nonetheless what does Christianity do with this God? Eh again I will answer you with a joke I will resume and further develop a line of thought in I don't know which one I think it is Less Than Nothing my book. The starting point of Christianity for me should be as Lacan says in Encore that God doesn't exist but ex-ists. It means exists outside itself, exists through our belief in it. I remember here a ridiculous scene I like commercial movies from The Clash of the Titans where Zeus played by Liam Neeson of course complains that if men stop praying to Gods and stop celebrating Gods in their rituals, Gods will cease to exist. And I always love this position it's not simply a fiction. Inter-subjectivity functions like this that you are aware that as it were you exist only as another person's dream. That if others don't believe in you you don't exist in a way. And here I want to evoke again he was a genius a wonderful passage from Kierkegaard from his Concept of Anxiety where Kierkegaard described in a mockingly how Simon Tornacensis he was a 13th century scholastic theologian from Paris quote Kierkegaard this guy Simon quote thought that God must be obliged to him to Simon to this theologian for having furnished a proof of the Trinity. This story has numerous analogies and in our time speculation has assumed such authority that it has practically tried to make God feel uncertain of himself like a monarch who is anxiously waiting to learn whether the General Assembly will make him an absolute or a limited monarch. End of quote. I like this vision that in the same way that you know God is waiting to hear do I really exist and so on you know as if believers decide about him. Now as Lacan put it long ago God is dead but doesn't know that he is dead. That's why he lives. In this case we should add that in Christianity only God learns that he is dead. However already the logical God of philosophers is a dead God although in a different way. So I claim that Tornacensis was wrong or he should be read in a more ambiguous way. If a philosopher proves the existence of God is the God who comes to exist in this way not already a dead God? So I claim in a more refined version what God really dreads is the very success of the proof of his existence. Namely the situation here is the same as an old joke that I repeat all the time as the well-known anecdote from about a Hearst Hearst Citizen Kane editor. God fears that the proof of his existence will fail so horrible I don't exist. But he fears even more that the proof will not fail. Kierkegaard of course talks about all this in a mocking way. But nonetheless I claim that if we move from the logical level to the level of belief and so on we should nonetheless say that the divine deadlock resides in the fact that the God whose existence is proven is like a monarch whom the assembly makes an absolute one. The very form of confirming the monarch absolute power undermines it. And the political parallel is here crucial since Kierkegaard himself resorts to the comparison between God and king. God exposed to the philosopher's whimsy wit is like a king exposed to the whimsy wit of the popular assembly. But what is the point here? It is simply that in both cases we should reject liberal decadence and opt for absolute monarchy. No I think that for Kierkegaard the properly comical point of incarnation is that God king becomes a beggar a low ordinary human being. So again the point of Kierkegaard is that to put it like this what happens in Christianity it's precisely that people's assembly believers voted down God. No you're no longer our king you can join us but you are one of us. Or to use again a story that I often use in my so that I will not be too long it's okay that I often use in my work or not often once I used it. I think it's a wonderful example of what of the traumatic impact of Christianity. I'm referring to one of the episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents the third year it was late 50s these before they were done in color minutes. It's a story called "The Glass Eye," the opening episode of the third year where Jessica Tandy who is really an interesting actor, she was the one who played in the original version of Samuel Beckett's "Not I," the mouth and at the same time she is the mother in Hitchcock's The Birds, you know this no? Okay. She plays a lone woman desperate who falls for a handsome ventriloquist called Max Collodi of course a reference to Pinocchio. So the point is that every evening she goes to that small theater where the ventriloquist plays with the dummy blah blah. And then I must confess when I saw this episode I was shocked I didn't expect the final reversal. At the end when people leave it's a small hall and in a shy way she approaches the ventriloquist who still sits there with his doll and approaches him and touches him his arm and then something I hope you guessed what happened. She discovers that it was the other way round. The big person collapses and out of the small doll a dwarf a midget crippled dwarf emerges. Like what you thought it's a puppet was the real person and the big real person was the puppet. I think something like this happens in Christianity you know. You speak with Christ you think oh Christ speaks on behalf of the Father. No no the Father is nobody is just a dead doll there is only Christ and so on. So in other words precisely this situation this displacement I hate this word points out nicely the creepiness of a human being. How it's not that there is God. God is a name for what for the divine is the creepy dimension in ourselves. What is creepiness? I already mentioned yesterday I will talk today about my friend Adam Kotsko from Chicago new book still in manuscript Creepiness where he claims that creepy is today's name for the Freudian Unheimliche, uncanny. For the uncanny core of a neighbor. Every neighbor is ultimately creepy. And this is what makes him a neighbor not just a fellow man. You know this is the key distinction for Lacan already for Freud. The fellow man is the one who is like us you can identify with him and so on. Fellow man becomes a becomes a neighbor precisely when he becomes creepy. You know this usual experience like let's say we were to be friends and then after being friends for years you would you were to catch me doing something absolutely disgusting that you would never have imagined me being able to do it. Like you know a blind man walks I kind of put my leg and for a strange way maybe this is my creepiness but I always have this idea when I see a blind man you know. Don't be afraid. I never do it I just follow Plato who said that there are two types of people: those who do horrible things and those who dream about horrible things. No other way. But every time it's true that I see a blind guy I have this idea of let's test him fuck him now will he fall down. I have this suspicion that they bluff you know all of them basically. Okay so let's go on. What I want to say is that this is why sorry to repeat my old story this is why I hope you saw already don't like it so much Stanley Kubrick's classic version of how's the guy called of Stephen King's The Shining. Stephen King didn't like the movie he thought Jack Nicholson was a catastrophe as the actor. And I think he was right. You know why? Because Stephen King made this point that the father figure who at the end you know daddy's coming with a knife terrorizes the family that the whole point is that he is a nice normal father warm and that gradually he becomes a monster a neighbor. But the problem with Jack Nicholson is the moment he enters the room you know what I mean? There is no surprise like you just wait when will he start his his evil smile or whatever. Okay so that's neighbor. What makes a neighbor creepy? Now let's do a little bit of theoretical work and then I give you time to my God is this a terror for me why is this it gets on my nerves all the time this mic here kind of introducing false democracy so that you can come and it's for another meeting them? For them? Yeah. I speak. I'm like a Stalinist leader. I speak for them. I represent them. Fuck them what do they have I I know better than they what is good for them you know. If they come they will just start to fight and so on you know what I mean. Yeah yeah sorry let me go on. So what first point: what makes a neighbor creepy are not his weird acts as such but the impenetrability of the desire that sustains these acts. This is a crucial point. For example it's not a good example of creepiness but nonetheless take Marquis de Sade. You know what's truly enigmatic about him? It's not what he writes about. What he writes about I think is okay it may be shocking but it's boring and flat you know these endless visions. If you want to I know people sometimes say you know if you want to fall asleep and cannot they usually say I don't know count sheep or whatever no. I say read Days of Sodom. After number it gets totally boring. It's just totally mechanic combination you know it's like around I think you take like two virgins, one cow, one old man and a dog and they do it in this way. Then you take two cows, three men and so it's totally boring. The only enigma and Lacan saw this nicely is why did he write about it? You know what I mean? His writing not in some sublime Derridean way, the very act of his compulsion to write. Why did he feel this incredible pressure to go on writing? This doesn't enter the perverse economy. That's his ethical aspect, his true enigma. Which is why if you know the history when he was in that Charenton or where the madhouse in the last years of his life, what really hit him there was not that he wasn't able to have sex or of orgies, more or less he was able. But that towards the end they took paper and pen from him. You know this is the enigma. This is the creepy moment. I mean okay you're a pervert you torture people you rape them it's disgusting but it's not creepy. It's not enigmatic. The enigmatic is this. So the question is: what does a creepy neighbor want? What does he get out of it? You know we suspect that another person is creepy precisely when a guy is doing something but all of a sudden you discover that it is not for the obvious reason that he is doing that. Here is a quote from Kotsko longer but very simple one. Quote In the case of a sleazy guy who insists on propositioning every woman he meets the element of enigma may seem to be missing. Okay he's asking every woman can I fuck you blah blah so okay he wants sex. And yet it seems strange that simply wanting sex would be creepy because a man who politely asks a woman on a date and then accepts the answer is all things being equal definitely not creepy. It may be tasteless it may be intrusive but it's not creepy. What makes the sleazy guy creepy is not that he is simply asking too many women out but that his constant failure seems to indicate that he doesn't care that his methods are ineffective that he always fails. It is as though he's directly getting off on the very act of approaching women with no regard for the ostensible goal of sleeping with them. When we recognize this we can't help but ask but why is he doing it? What is he getting out of it? End quote. You see that's the enigma. And again allow me to repeat at least here already for the fourth fifth time a story by told me by your own British Lacanian Darian Leader where a nice symptom happened to one of his patients he told me so which I think exactly can be read as a defense against his own the patient's own creepiness. I'm sorry if you know the story. He told me that one patient told him of a slip of tongue that happened to him he tried to seduce a lady so they went to a hotel. First down he took her to a restaurant and of course the idea was after a nice meal why don't we jump up to the room. But what happened is that when they entered the restaurant he approached a waiter and instead of saying a table for two he said a bed for two please. Now the point of Darian Leader was that precisely this is not a vulgar Freudian slip in the sense of oh fuck it we know this is just overture I really care about that. But it's exact the opposite. He the guy was secretly afraid that he will enjoy the meal too much you see and that he will forget about his true duty to do it after. So it's as if reminding myself: no I'm not here just to eat like a pig I should spare the energy it's that. In in other words that would have been a you know for example if you are a lady and if I may make a sexist remark there are quite many nice ladies here don't accuse me of being creepy now. If you were wouldn't you feel it creepy if a guy takes you to a restaurant and even if you don't have the intention to make allow him to make love to you later. But okay you eat with him and the whole setting is okay even if I will say no I expect him to make passes or whatever. But again I'm just repeating this situation. If all of a sudden you would have noticed the excessive pleasure of oh why don't we order X in that way and that you would have felt like where am I here? Isn't you know this is creepiness. Here again enters the Lacanian distinction between of course between object of desire and object-cause of desire. Object of desire is what I desire let's say sorry male chauvinist perspective can be others of course sleep with that woman. Object-cause of desire is what makes me desire to do that. And that's for Freud the original perversity of desire is that there is always some pervert excess which makes me desire. And I claim perversion gets open precisely when you directly target when you elevate object-cause of desire into desire itself. Let's say I want to sleep with a lady and what really triggered my desire is stupid example I don't think it really functions today but let us say the way her hair is curled and so on. But you know all would become creepy if okay she says yes let's go to bed and then she lays there expecting me okay now show what kind of a man do do it and I just go on caressing her hair and so on and oh you also want to fuck sorry but I you know like again when what should be the object-cause of desire becomes the thing itself. That's what makes it creepy. Next point. I am not just blaming this pervert situation constellation it can also be given a hysterical turn which is even revolutionary I would say. Namely of course we have this effect of creepiness in the sense of my God it's for you know when you don't know and then you discover that the guy is doing it for some strange eccentric idiosyncratic reason. But how does it work in a non-creepy way? It can work in this way: somebody is doing something and when the effect on you is not creepiness but simply enigma. In the sense of in what sense? Okay Kotsko mentioned Girls, the TV series with that actress author who now published I think a book a bestseller Lena Dunham, no? And she says about her nudity and of course the enigma of that nudity is that I'm sorry again for this male chauvinist remark as a naked woman she is not beautiful to put it mildly no. So okay quote Initially her nudity was aggressively perverse but as Lena Dunham character moves beyond her perverse indulgences in later episodes her nudity takes on a variety of new roles. For instance one scene depicts her getting dressed in the morning after a shower demonstrating her high level of comfort with her live-in boyfriend. Other nude scenes highlight her vulnerability or other emotional states but none of them seem to have the primary goal of sexually arousing the viewer nor of violating their normal expectations of sexual titillation. It is as though the show's aggressive use of nudity had somehow deactivated the customary use of female nudity opening up a space for a more thorough exploration of what nudity could mean as part of the emotional landscape of a scene. End of quote. And I like very much this reading. Of course you can say that but I think it's too simple to say okay the point is simply she offers herself naked because she knows very well that she is not too attractive and but nonetheless I think the effect is genuinely enigmatic. This you know she is doing it but not for this reason nor for that reason why is she doing it and so on and so on. And here we should oppose perversion and hysteria. Hysteria is this perplexity: why is she doing it? But in a pervert there is no perplexity. The very definition for Freud and Lacan of a pervert is: he knows what he wants. This is why incidentally also that's the ABC of psychoanalytic clinic perverts are the most difficult patients. Because you know hysterics are intrigued that's why they're prone to transference and so on while the pervert knows what he wants is basically satisfied and he feels no need in psychoanalysis. But I want to go into this say repeat another old but I claim important point. This is why in contrast to the revolutionary 1960s when it was fashionable to assert perversion against the compromise of hysteria, I think we should reassert hysteria as the original subversive attitude. What do I want to say by it? Usually people claimed at least this was fashionable when I was young and although 60s were supposed to be the big anti sorry pro-feminist epoch of awakened feminism, I think that at least in this mode to relate to perversion to to give preference to perversion over hysteria there was a clear anti-feminist male bias because the idea was this one that a hysterical subject is just a provocateur. You provoke the master but it's always ambiguous you provoke the master but beneath this provocation there is always it lays dormant there a call for an authentic master and so on. You know that a hysterical subject just plays the game: provoke the master but at the same time call for a master while as Freud even unfortunately puts somewhere pervert pervert subject a pervert effectively enacts what hysterics are only dreaming about. So again the idea is: hysterics are these protest guys who don't want to go to the end just playing with the master while perverts are revolutionaries: we do it. No I think we should exactly turn it around. There is a constant in Lacan and Freud already of for example Freud says something beautiful somewhere: he says that in per no nowhere is the unconscious more inaccessible excluded than in perversion. Which is a very surprising statement because you would have thought isn't a pervert the one who precisely brings it all out every dirty blah blah. No there it's totally closed. Why? Now we have to make a next step which is that for Lacan perversion is a transgression of course of explicit rules but what I repeatedly called an inherent transgression is the other obscene side which while apparently transgressing the law sustains it. You know and every institution has this type of perverse rituals. You have this grey domain which is publicly ignored the way you can violate the law and so on but as such it sustains the law. And it's for me as I repeat it for my God almost three decades that this is why the perverse transgression is crucial for the self-reproduction of a legal order. At all levels, from private economy intimate economy to half public okay I will not repeat here these old boring examples that I over-exploit that like pedophilia and Catholic Church. Of course pedophilia is a perversion but I claim it's an institutional perversion and as such part of the church's identity. You cannot say let's erase pedophilia and we will get pure clean church. No you get something else I don't know what probably better than the existing church but not it. And so or like I've written intensely about it you must know the examples for example army or school all this dirty usually with homosexual innuendos if we are in a male community you know all these secret rituals. This is what keeps institutions together. You always need a master can be a master but you need a pervert behind. Even in this most superficial sense. We don't torture we have human rights but let me put it like this: no human rights without Guantanamo if I may put it this way, no where you do your waterboarding or whatever all this. And did you notice the nice irony how I'm horrified by them but nonetheless ISIS did you look see some of those publicly televised recorded beheadings liquidations. Did you notice that the prisoners to be killed are dressed in that yellow dress. You know why? Because it's Guantanamo, no? It's a nice detail nonetheless poetic almost detail. Okay what I want to say is this that we have this is the basic insight of the hysteric provocation and that's why a hysterical subject does not go to the end. The basic hysteric provocation is not oh I want to provoke the master but not quite at the end I will submit. No it's this insight that direct transgression is inherent doesn't really overcome the system. That's the big hysterical insight, a very deep insight. Which is enacted there. And that's the okay I will not go into other Lacanian details you must know them which can be beautifully deployed how for Lacan that's why subject as such is hysterical because as Lacan put it: subject is not an object. This simply means you are a subject insofar as you cannot properly locate yourself as an object. And this hystericizes you. You know all the classical examples like Juliet to Romeo: why am I that name? Again I develop this point often just to recapitulate it for you. That's why this was first developed by my good friend Slovene part of my Slovene Lacanian gang Mladen Dolar of how hysteria is the necessary supplement to what Althusser called ideological interpellation. The ideological interpellation hails you as a subject provides your social identity: you are whatever you are a clerk mother teacher pupil blah blah. The hysterical question is: why am I what you are saying that I am? And this a little bit of this you find it also in this can be pretty annoying feminine question. I wonder women should say if the same goes for men. You know this eternal torturing question of a woman: Tell me why do you love me. I mean don't I explode. Okay the although I'm tempted again to repeat my joke to say okay let's approach it in a perverse way with a bureaucratic way I will explain why I love you. Let's make a list: your eyes nine point, your hair eight points, your legs seven, your breasts beautiful ten. You see my criterion for love is the average must be so that's why I love you you know you pass it. But of course that's by definition not love. And that's what also what hysterics know. You know that the true love is triggered the object cause of true love is always a mark of imperfection. You know to love really someone you must find something which disturbs you and then as a reaction you say: in spite of this I love her. Okay I will not go into this it was said enough. What again I want to say here is that and this will be my towards the end then I nonetheless want to leave you some time for debate. Along this lines back to Adam Kotsko he characterizes hysteria as a quote A way of creeping out the social order itself. And just as in the case of the individual psyche the social order is only susceptible of being crept out due to the creepiness it carries within itself. Under normal circumstances the social order appears to be obsessive in structure opting for certain acceptable desires while repressing or excluding others. Yet from the hysteric's perspective the most salient fact about the social order is the way it is continually setting us up to fail so that it can even seem that the social order needs transgression and the illicit creepy enjoyment that it provides the transgression. The social order's wink at and nod of unofficial permission toward our creepy indulgences simultaneously makes social constraints more bearable and binds us more closely to the social order insofar as it makes those creepy indulgences possible. In short the hysteric is uniquely positioned to see that the pervert has no point. End quote. My comment: hysteria is as such always a historical formation. It reacts to the predominant mode of ideological identification. This historical approach also allows us to reject the standard argument according to which in today's permissive era we no longer get hysterical patients whose symptoms are caused by the oppressed sexuality. That's the standard line no that hysteria as the protest against strict social prohibitions oppressions and so on this belongs to Freudian Victorian era what but today it's permissiveness and that today this is why today so-called borderline is replacing more and more hysteria. But from the Lacanian standpoint I think borderline is precisely today's name for hysteria. It's hysteria in our post-authoritarian age when the traditional master is more and more replaced by a neutral expert legitimized by his or her scientific knowledge. Let me here is the last quote from Adam Kotsko: thankfully the social order no longer explicitly backs women so completely into a corner as in the age of the housewife. Yet women still face conflicting pressures such as those that Carrie, Carrie from Sex and the City, feverishly attempts to navigate in her quest to avoid being that girl in Sex and the City. Indeed some of the contradictions have even been intensified and complicated. As for example women are expected to excel in professional life while still meeting traditional requirements of motherhood. If anything women suffer from having too many mutually contradictory outlets for their desire. Hence the contemporary manifestation of hysteria is not the psychosomatic intrusion of the body into the social order. Like you know the most elementary case Freud's of Dora: she was coughing why? She dreamt about fellatio ah cannot even imagine so it returned as a bodily system. No. In the face of the impossible demand to have it all you are not only allowed to but even pressed to be everything: to make a career to be a beautiful woman good mother and so on. In the face of this impossible demand the hysteric effectively goes on strike refusing desire altogether. I think this is the best definition maybe some of you know it better that you can provide of borderline. Borderline is precisely desire on strike as the contemporary the contemporary form of hysteria. So you know what I did it over one hour and a half and let's go a little bit more but I feel so bad for doing what I do that is to say talking too much so that why don't you I mean now we have this stupid time for democracy or whatever this disgusting demagogic provocation here no. Please shout if you want. How do you prefer? Now it's so stupid that I don't have a master. I am really someone to tell like you are there can you shout loud enough or you come here you decide. How do we do it? Shout from here. Shout is better. No but the point is that he is there. Yeah. Shout. Okay so that shout. You raise the hand no? Didn't you? I just want to ask you some question. Yeah but that's what I mean it's time for questioning but shout so that people will hear you you know. I just want to say that I have read many books from Alasdair MacIntyre you know. Sorry which one? Alasdair MacIntyre. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. And as I know that he wrote many books or works about Marxism in his early. Sorry about? Marxism. Marxism. Yeah Marxism yeah yeah. And as I know that he use a very important item is practice. Practice is also a a very important item in Marxism and he use practice to build his revolutionary Aristotelianism. So may I ask that how you think about the practice this item in Marxism and do you think that there are many relation has something to do with the revolutionary in Marxism. Yeah but yeah it's a nice question. Okay I mean again the only problem is to answer it properly it means another talk. But what so I will just give you some maybe surprising hints. First I think that it was demonstrated by Marxists who really knew about it like the young Lukács and some in the Frankfurt school and so on that practice is not to be opposed to theory. So the first thing is to totally reject this entire topic of oh you're just in your ivory tower of theory we need practical engagement and so on and so on. The worst conformism is blind practice and not to be blind in practice you need theory. So practice the relevance of practice is for me that precisely you refuse to be as it were blackmailed by practice. You know I often use this example of charity today. That's for me practice as it were. Like my God what do you bullshit here about Lacan Hegel all these distinctions when children are starving in Somalia and so on and so on. Why is this ideology at its purest? Because the message between the lines is: do something don't think too much. You know I mean I had some quotes from people like Bill Gates and so on who all make this point. For example people are dying by millions starving today why don't we just all get together NGOs people charity states rich people and do something. Let's not lose time with all those debates about capitalism communism ideology and so on. So for me the first step toward authentic practice is theory. Theory without practice is we know why and this is the the core of Marxist critique of ideology. Ideology is not a crazy theory which is obfuscating what we're doing in practice. Ideology at its most radical is part of your daily practice. You live Althusser pointed this nicely we live ideology in our daily life. You know for me for example racism is not nobody almost nobody is racist today in this direct sense whatever no. True racism is when you true racism for me today is is not to say I don't know Arabs are stupid terrorists fanatics Islam is bad terror. No true racism is to say what Netanyahu and all of them are saying you know: Islam is a great religion but my God the way and then you go into this for example racism is for me to say I love them but this but you know: their food smells bad I don't like the sound of their music and so on and so on. Racism as ideology is why do you find something in the other's way of life intolerable. This whole structure of envy hatred fascination and so on. And so for me again I don't fetishize practice. I'm even ready to go here a step further where probably no one will follow me. You know again I refer to my friend Mladen Dolar who made recently in a debate we had in Slovenia a wonderful observation. You know that this 11th thesis you know philosophers have only interpreted the world the point is also to change it no? Okay let me ask yourself I'm sorry if I already repeat this point here maybe a year ago let me ask you an extremely stupid naive question: Who are these stupid philosophers who just interpreted the world? All of them as far as I know of course not in the sense of Marx's practice but practically all of them wanted to change the world. Plato we know it, Republic was a blueprint to change and you know the story he even went to Syracuse to Sicily to convince the local tyrant there to reconstruct his state in this sense. They practically all wanted to change the world. Spinoza has a project Kant has a project all all philosophers had a project how to change the world. Now I will become really evil. Except one. Absolutely no. Hegel which is the greatest inspiration for Marx no. With Hegel you definitely don't have this. He doesn't want to change the world. That's why and that's the beauty he was the most valuable source for actual revolutionary practice. Or to put it in another way to really change things and that's what I will improvise if I will still survive and not have a heart attack at today at LSE at that talk. That's why to really change things you must go through that point of hopelessness where you lose your dreams and so on you know. So let's not just first to really change the world you have to see how what spontaneously comes to you as the way to change the world how to renounce that and so on which is why and that was the greatness of Lukács in History and Class Consciousness to describe which is why an a theoretical what Lukács calls self-consciousness where you in an act of self-reflection become aware of what you are as a historical agent. This is the greatest practical act that you can imagine. And I will go even yeah sorry immediately even further here. That's why what I like in Adorno is this insight which I think is more true than ever apropos today's interactive art and so on. You know like when all this new digitalization began at the very beginning in 60s Hans Magnus Enzensberger German moderately leftist cultural theorist made this point about how in today's culture we are too much passive consumerists and he saw this is typical modernist leftist appropriation he saw in interactive media a way nonetheless to assume an active role we just don't stare at the screen we co co-create it and so on and so on. But already Adorno saw something very nicely that if anything in today's consumerist society we are not passive consumers we are all the time solicited involved in pseudo-activity and so on and so on. As Adorno put it nicely the most difficult thing today is not to be active but to be authentically passive. Maybe this is not the ultimate act I'm not saying we just sit back and that's the big revolution you know but like to step back and open yourself in an authentically passive way to this situation. Which is why to stop to close with my last joke which I repeat I think in my Lenin book on Marx like that's the Marx that I love. You know there are some letters my God I think I found it I don't know where from when it looked for a moment that there will be a European revolution and Marx wrote to Engels a letter which is a letter of pure panic. He says: Oh my God why revolution already now let them wait I haven't yet finished my Capital and so on. That's authentic Marx you know. Not that oh practical activity whatever and so on. Today we have to emphasize this because we do live in a hyperactive society you know. We are passive at a more radical level. The form of how we are unable to change anything is precisely because through our hyperactivity we reproduce the way things are. I know I didn't answer you but fuck it that's life. Sorry there was a green guy there and then first row. You should shout I'm half blind. Okay you begin the green guy. You're talking about philosophy and changing the world? Yeah. I'm very intrigued by your relationship quote unquote with with Chomsky as two at you and Chomsky's work I I really respect and admire but I feel that there is this standoff between you. I know he accuses you of posturing. And I don't know whether this is male soap opera or or maybe when you when you become a very big public intellectual you can afford to sort of say those things. But it really saddens me that two people who are sort of very respected leaders of the left-leaning intelligentsia don't seem to have a relationship other than to sort of slag each other off. No okay I will a very briefly I will clarify it. As you know it all happened maybe not in this room but at Birkbeck I think two years or was it a year a little bit over a year ago somebody asked me did you hear about Chomsky's attack on you? Because the first move was made by Chomsky gave some radio interview where he totally totally tried to squash me. Like then because then the the journalist ask him okay but okay you don't agree with him theoretically but what about some progressive political collective acts? Would you be ready to collaborate with him there? And Chomsky said no absolutely no nowhere and so on and so on. So I then I didn't know anything about it I just in a crazy shocked way reacted here. And I was pretty pissed off when then somebody someone transcribed this and then it started to circulate as I my my response to Chomsky. So then of course he did back and then the only thing that I count it's if you noticed it is done in an extremely respectful
ritual to ignore the authenticity of our inner belief and so on and so on. However I think that this playfulness should not deceive us. Catholicism is resorting to such tricks to save the divine big other in his goodness while the capriciously irrational predestination in Protestantism confronts us with a God who is ultimately not good and all-powerful but stained by an indelible suspicion of being stupid, arbitrary or even outright evil. That is to say I think that the dark implicit lesson of Protestantism is if you want God you have to renounce divine goodness. Along this lines the most radical reading I quote it in my book of the Book of Job was proposed in 1930s by a Norwegian theologian Peter Wessel Zapffe who accentuated Job's boundless perplexity when God himself finally appears to him. Expecting a sacred and pure God whose intellect is infinitely superior to ours, Job I quote finds himself confronted with a world ruler of grotesque primitiveness, a cosmic cave dweller, a braggart and blusterer almost agreeable in his total ignorance of spiritual culture. What is new for Job is not God's greatness in quantifiable terms, that he knew fully in advance. What is new is God's qualitative baseness. End of quote. And I claim again another reference to a song that I mentioned already in my books, one can discern the traces of this full acceptance of God's unconditional capricious authority in the last song Johnny Cash recorded just before his death, "The Man Comes Around." It's a very weird song about Armageddon, the end of days when God will appear and perform the Last Judgment. And this event is presented in this song as pure arbitrary terror. God almost appears as evil personified, as a kind of political informer, a man who comes around and provokes consternation by taking names, by deciding you are saved you are lost and so on in totally arbitrary way. If anything Cash's description evokes the well-known scene of people lined up for a brutal interrogation and then an informer pointing out those selected for torture. There is no mercy, no pardon, no jubilation. We are all fixed in our roles. As Johnny Cash says the just remain just, the filthy remain filthy. Even worse in this divine proclamation we are not simply judged in a just way, we are informed from outside as if learning about an arbitrary decision that we were righteous or sinners, that we are saved or condemned. This decision has nothing to do with our inner qualities. And again this dark excess of the ruthless divine sadism, excess over the image of a severe but nonetheless just God is I claim a necessary negative an underside of Christian love. Love which suspends the law is necessary accompanied by a arbitrary cruelty which also suspends the law. What do we mean by this? Let me I think already again mentioned it but nonetheless again let me quote you here a brief passage from Primo Levi, If This Is a Man, where he Primo Levi his Auschwitz memoirs, where he describes the dreadful procedure of the term used in the camp was selekcja, Polish selection, the survival examination in the camp. Quote each one of us as he comes naked out of the daily room into the cold October air has to run the few steps between the two doors, give the card to the SS man and enter the dormitory door. The SS man, the doctor, in the fraction of a second between two successive crossings, with a glance at once back and front judges everyone's fate and in turn gives the card to the man on his right or his left and this is the life or death for each of us. In three or four minutes a hut of men is done, as is the whole camp of men in the course of an afternoon. End of quote. So right means survival, left means gas chamber. Is there not something properly comic in this ridiculous spectacle? Because as Primo Levi reports how you know before running just for a second to be observed in front of the SS doctor prisoners tried of course to create an impression that they are still vital enough, healthy enough. So they shared all the tricks how if you pinch your lips a little bit or whatever you will appear more alive. It's a comedy again but a crazy comedy. And what I want to draw your attention to is how again the parallel between this scene, maybe one of the most terrifying scenes sorry not scene like scene but scene like picture from Primo Levi I strictly think that there is a parallel between this and the Last Judgment. I think that the truly subversive reading of Last Judgment is not some kind of a pseudo-Derridean deconstruction in the sense yes we should maintain the hope that at some point at the end you know there will be an honest judgment where the truly good ones will be redeemed and so on and so on. No the problem is not this judgment is a utopian point forever postponed. No the problem is it happens but as a horrible travesty of itself. The final judgment is as sorry as some commentators noted the reasoning God decides who to free and who to blame. Those who believe in Jesus will be saved and will escape punishment but the problem is precisely this that this judgment is inconsistent. If our salvation depends on our belief in Jesus then Jesus doesn't have in God then he doesn't have to make any decision but just to follow the insight. But I claim it's crucial that in this staging of Last Judgment the idea the formulation is God decides. It's a totally arbitrary procedure. That's I think again the deepest insight of predestination is that it doesn't matter what you do. God God decides from outside in a totally arbitrary way. This God from the song by John Cash is effectively a God of terror. Terror not just in the sense of the arbitrariness of predestination and the nightmareish quality of the Last Judgment but even at the more visceral level indicated by a passage from Matthew Gospel which is also I noticed as a rule ignored by the Christian tradition. Just listen. Here is how Matthew describes the redemptive death of Christ. Quote from Matthew Jesus when he had cried again with a loud voice yielded up the ghost and the earth did quake and the rocks rent and the graves were opened and many bodies of the saints which slept arose and came out of the graves after his resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many. End of quote. We can easily see from these lines why in the opening credits of the remake of the famous undead horror movie Dawn of the Dead, Johnny Cash's song accompanies a documentary mixture of news reports and home videos in order to provide a quick exposition of a zombie outbreak gone global and catastrophic. The reason Jesus of Christianity is himself I claim the ultimate profane obscenity, the ultimate returning horror. Not a ghost but reanimated flesh crawled out from the grave three days rotten demanding that we slide our finger along into his filthy wounds demanding if translators were more honest with the original Greek that we chomp down on his flesh and guzzle his blood. The authentic Christian notion of resurrection I think should be totally cleansed of this obscene topic. What God is love means is to quote John no one has ever seen God but if we love one another God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. End of quote. So what I'm saying you see is that all that topic that you add above this God is Holy Spirit is for me where the Bible meets horror movies obscenity. I mean I think we should do precisely this dirty imagining and imagine rising of the dead as a scene from a horror movie you know all those creepy deads slowly moving towards us and so on and so on. Next point I want nonetheless to complicate things a little bit namely this motive of man's total subordination to God. Total subordination in the sense that it's predestination we cannot do not have any freedom of choice everything is decided in advance far from necessarily sustaining a vision of slavery and subordination can also sustain a project of universal emancipation. It's interesting how precisely those religions or those schools orientations within a religion which preached man's total subordination to God usually had an agenda of egalitarian emancipation. So now comes my surprise but I'm not the one who supports this guy in any way. Let me read you I hope it will not be too boring a long quote from you know who is Sayyid Qutb, the so-called philosopher of Al-Qaeda as the Western media call him? No in no way do I subscribe to what he is saying. Nonetheless I would like to read you a longer passage from his Milestones where he in a nice theological way nonetheless deploys the link between universal freedom and human servitude to God. Just listen to this rather long quote. Quote A society in which sovereignty belongs exclusively to Allah and finds expression in its obedience to the divine law and every person is set free from servitude to others only then does it taste true freedom. This alone is human civilization because the basis of human civilization is the complete and true freedom of every person and the full dignity of every individual in the community. On the other hand in a society in which some people are lords who legislate and others are slaves who obey them there is no freedom in the real sense nor dignity for the individual. It is necessary to understand the point that legislation is not limited only to legal matters since some people do in fact assign this narrow meaning to the Sharia. The fact is that attitudes, the way of living, values, criteria, habits and traditions are all legislated and affect people. If a particular group of people forges all these chains to imprison others in them it will not be a free society. In such a society some people have the position of authority while others are subservient to them. This society will be backward. An Islamic society is unique insofar as in it authority belongs to Allah alone and man freeing himself from servitude to other human beings serves only Allah attaining real and complete freedom. The focus of human civilization to this society human dignity and honor are sacrosanct in the law prescribed by Allah. Man as the vice-regent of Allah on earth attains a position even higher than that of the angels. In a society based on the concept belief and way of life originating from Allah man's dignity is held inviolable to the highest degree. No one is a slave to another as they are in societies in which the concepts beliefs and way of life originate from human sources. In the former society, Islamic society, man's noblest characteristics both spiritual and intellectual find fullest expression while in a society based on color race nationalism or other similar bases this degenerates into fetters for human thought and a means for suppressing nobler human attributes and qualities. All men are equal regardless of their color race or nation. But when they are deprived of spirit and reason they are also divested of their humanity. Man is able to change his beliefs thinking and attitude toward life but he is incapable of changing his color and race nor can he decide in what place or nation he is to be born. Thus it is clear that a society is civilized only to the extent that human associations are based on a community of free moral choice and a society is backward insofar as the basis of association is something other than free choice. My God it's quite incredible what he says here. It's quite a radical egalitarianism. Okay now of course comes my evil mind. Did you notice how when he lists all these features into which we are born which are not our free choice color race nation and so on, aye-aye-aye one is missing: sex gender, no? If he were to be consequent he should have added to this series sex but of course he cannot. Namely again his problem is why does a free society not include the full equality of men and women? Precisely because to be a man or a woman okay maybe with all the sex operations today but at least in majority of our societies for most of us your gender is not a matter of your free choice. Quick underlying premise is that insofar as we humans act freely in the sense of just spontaneously following our natural inclinations we are not really free but enslaved to our human sorry animal natures. And it's interesting how I owe this to John Milbank who drew my attention to this passage in Aristotle how we find this same line of reasoning already in Aristotle who referring to slavery as an example to illustrate a general ontological feature, this is from Aristotle's Metaphysics Book he wrote that left to themselves slave are free in the sense that they just do what they want while free men follow their duty. It is this very freedom just you follow your natural inclinations which makes slaves slaves. A quote from Aristotle: All things are ordered together somehow but not all are alike. Both fishes and fowls and plants and the world is not such that one thing has nothing to do with another but they are all connected for all are ordered together to one end. But it is as in a house where the free men are least at liberty to act at random all things or most things are already ordained for them while slaves and animals do little for the common good and for the most part live at random for this is the sort of principle that constitutes the nature of each. End of quote. So in spite of all that is problematic in this passage there is I think a grain of truth in it. That is to say does this characterization of slaves not provide a good determination of today's what we usually refer to as consumerist slavery where I am allowed to act at random and do what I want but precisely as such I remain enslaved to the universe of commodity to how I am stimulated from the commodities? So again the underlying idea here is that precisely when you are formally free in the sense of you do what you want you are truly enslaved and that only by subordinating yourself to some kind of higher authority for Qutb God for Aristotle your inner sense of duty are you in a deeper sense free. Of course we can see how they diverge. Aristotle's advantage from our standpoint is that he refers just to the sense of ethical duty which makes you free in a way which of course points forward towards Kant. But the advantage of Qutb is that for him freedom is also social and economic, radical freedom. There is no slavery. Radical freedom and equality in social matters. And what fascinated me so much is that recently I was reading to do some piece of criticism a text by that Road to Serfdom by Hayek, you know that Hayek and he says strangely exactly the same thing only instead of God or inner duty the absolute master that he imposes is a market. And again it's a wonderful very dialectical line of thought where he says if we don't have an unconditional and arbitrary authority above us which decides our fate and it's basically out of our control again it's arbitrary not just without this unconditional external authority we necessarily regress to serfdom. His idea is this one that it's precisely this idea you play on the market you never know because it doesn't depend on you how your what will be the result of your interventions, you may be very rational prudent but nonetheless because of some irrational market movements you lose everything or whatever. His point is that precisely because of this you remain free in a way and he has another line of thought which I also find very instructive especially in view of what we don't have time to go into it of what Fred Jameson is now developing and he is universally almost rejected for this developing as his American Utopia I think already mentioned it if not the last time before when I was here. You know Fred Jameson now did an intervention a text now I have it it's a full text called An American Utopia and he tries to reply to the question like after all the bullshit that we had all the failures how can we even imagine an alternative communist society? And he does something which as you may suspect appeals to me because it's totally crazy. His first premise is that it should be a militarized society, universal conscription. All society should be and you know how he writes there how he came to this idea? He told me when he was young he remembers in '51 or '52 the debate between Eisenhower and I forgot Adlai Stevenson I think who was the Democratic and Democratic candidate for president Adlai Stevenson advocated what Obama tries to do today: universal healthcare. And Eisenhower's reply as a general was if you want free state organized universal healthcare join the army. And now Fred's idea is okay fuck it let's do it you know. Then he was thinking further and said that the army is the only big remaining welfare institution in United States. You know it finances healthcare is covered, it finances your education, it provides housing and so on and so on. So his idea is why not universalize the model of the army? And he goes pretty far here. He is even ready to admit that this means a great loss of economic efficiency and also you lose at least the absolute freedom to choose your job. Of course the problem is there are problems with his vision. I don't think it works. No no no not because I'm secretly a liberal or whatever. The problem is the following one for me. He is not honest enough because if you look closely at what he expects from the army it's just a kind of a centralized state-run economic regulation. Why then call it army? Army is war nonetheless. So it's an impossible dream. He wants an army which doesn't do war but just like and he says then what he he confronts this problem why army and his answer is that okay army has to have war but we have enough past heroes we celebrate there we play all this mocking game but we don't do war. Ah it doesn't work that's my first point problem. Second point is that he totally avoids the question which is maybe a naive liberal question but nonetheless okay it's nice to paint this image of some kind of a centralized army institution which locates jobs and so on we are all secure but I'm sorry for these liberal sounding words but who will run the army? Who will choose the generals and so on? He totally avoids this question but he has another good point which is which brings me back to Hayek. His point and here I like Fred, his point is that the biggest problem in communism even if we imagine it and I think this is a deep truth. It he does the same same thing as I tried to do apropos God like let's imagine an evil God no? So instead of claiming communism is impossible let's think honestly how would it have looked even if it's impossible but if somehow we were able to imagine it. And here I like it he is still a great guy. He totally rejects this stupidity that somehow envy competition is a bourgeois phenomenon, phenomenon market competitiveness and that in communism we would have a much more collaborative mood, I mean I help you your welfare is my happiness and so on. He said no capitalism can manage this by making competitiveness envy socially productive in some way but he says the big problem which can even ruin communism will be envy, that this will be the mega problem. Why? And here I will make a link with Hayek. You remember how I mentioned this insight of Hayek that capitalism works precisely because it is unjust? And an old motive I maybe even repeated it here already, it's very clear to Hayek that the injustice of capitalism far from making it unacceptable it's what make it function because it prevents envy from exploding. Let us say I am let us say we live in capitalism I and you I don't know who we are both capitalists, you succeed I fail. But my failure is to me from the standpoint of my narcissism much easier to accept if I can tell myself fuck it that idiot was just lucky we know market is unjust and so on. Can you imagine how traumatic would it have been to admit that you succeeded on the market because you are simply much better more intelligent and so on? Because then I have no escape. So again it's the very injustice of it which makes capitalism liveable, in the sense that we oh he was just lucky the jerk and so on in the sense of controlling all this. This is why I repeat my old line but it's important. This is why my friend Dupuy whom I mentioned a lot yesterday also developed how this is the weak point of John Rawls' theory of justice, no? It only works if envy is not a fundamental factor. You know to simplify it to the utmost Rawls' theory of justice: you are allowed to be rich, I mean to get rich to earn more only if A) two conditions and they are catastrophic I think, A) if your getting wealthier also helps a little bit those who are lower than you, so that you can say it's not just me getting more wealthy everyone even the lowest on the social ladder profit. And second point that you get wealthy not simply by inheriting it and so on but by your own hard work. But I think this is the formula for disaster. Can you imagine how people would envy each other the poor the rich because you again you would not have an excuse you see this is the injustice of capitalism and so on. It would explode in violence and Dupuy told me that when he proposed to Rawls this line of counter-argumentation and they knew each other because Dupuy was even correcting editing the French translation of Theory of Justice that Rawls was pretty shattered and basically just refused it: No I cannot even imagine this I don't accept it and so on. He admitted Rawls that with envy it's over. With envy his vision of of justice no longer works. I think so again Fred Jameson has this wonderful crazy vision of you know like my evil God: Yes communism but it will be hell because people will just envy each other and then comes the total madness where I think again things doesn't work with Fred Jameson. He another thing that I like with him is you know usually people imagine communism as big unification, you no longer have alienation between public private life between I don't know work and culture and so on. He says no only in communism the two will be clearly absolutely separated. You will have your domain of work where as a good soldier state will tell you you do this of course for only two three days a week couple of hours and then you are free for culture and pleasures. But again the problem being pleasures and culture envy explodes there. So what to do in an ultimate move of madness Jameson and he is not it's not clear at least to me I will see him next week and I will ask him. He proposes a kind of obligatory state-financed psychoanalytic institutes whose main function will be to cure you of envy, you know to you know like I can imagine how naively he thinks that you know you go there I envy my brother he got to screw that beautiful lady and they explain to you no as Lacan said your desire is the desire of the other don't you see the desire I I I think I think again I think that it radically doesn't work. And of course as I made it from this the point is how far should we follow this logic Aristotle Qutb and so on. Is it to what extent does egalitarian society imply a radical some radical unquestionable authority like again thinkers as different can you imagine more different thinkers like Qutb Aristotle and and Hayek? But again they all have this point: to be equal and free you need an absolute external authority. Without this hierarchy and authority emerges among people. Okay let me nonetheless return to return to Christianity. Is this the last word of Christianity? I think no of course you pass through. What I want to say is just this. We have Judaism with the law, divine law which is supposed to be just and so on. Then Christianity suspends the law through the work of love, you know all the Pauline I mean Saint Paul's stuff love love suspending the law. But what Protestant saw very well is that this suspension of the law should not be just in this beautiful Christian traditionally Christian external way, you know no love law is not the ultimate authority there is this beautiful excess of love pardon mercy and so on that no law have to be superseded also from within that when you move to love as the external supplement to the law the price you pay is the law itself becomes this law of predestination totally arbitrary crazy law and so on and so on. It's a serious insight. But let me go on. So nonetheless what does Christianity do with this God? Eh again I will answer you with a joke I will resume and further develop a line of thought in I don't know which one I think it is Less Than Nothing my book. The starting point of Christianity for me should be as Lacan says in Encore that God doesn't exist but ex-ists. It means exists outside itself, exists through our belief in it. I remember here a ridiculous scene I like commercial movies from The Clash of the Titans where Zeus played by Liam Neeson of course complains that if men stop praying to Gods and stop celebrating Gods in their rituals, Gods will cease to exist. And I always love this position it's not simply a fiction. Inter-subjectivity functions like this that you are aware that as it were you exist only as another person's dream. That if others don't believe in you you don't exist in a way. And here I want to evoke again he was a genius a wonderful passage from Kierkegaard from his Concept of Anxiety where Kierkegaard described in a mockingly how Simon Tornacensis he was a 13th century scholastic theologian from Paris quote Kierkegaard this guy Simon quote thought that God must be obliged to him to Simon to this theologian for having furnished a proof of the Trinity. This story has numerous analogies and in our time speculation has assumed such authority that it has practically tried to make God feel uncertain of himself like a monarch who is anxiously waiting to learn whether the General Assembly will make him an absolute or a limited monarch. End of quote. I like this vision that in the same way that you know God is waiting to hear do I really exist and so on you know as if believers decide about him. Now as Lacan put it long ago God is dead but doesn't know that he is dead. That's why he lives. In this case we should add that in Christianity only God learns that he is dead. However already the logical God of philosophers is a dead God although in a different way. So I claim that Tornacensis was wrong or he should be read in a more ambiguous way. If a philosopher proves the existence of God is the God who comes to exist in this way not already a dead God? So I claim in a more refined version what God really dreads is the very success of the proof of his existence. Namely the situation here is the same as an old joke that I repeat all the time as the well-known anecdote from about a Hearst Hearst Citizen Kane editor. God fears that the proof of his existence will fail so horrible I don't exist. But he fears even more that the proof will not fail. Kierkegaard of course talks about all this in a mocking way. But nonetheless I claim that if we move from the logical level to the level of belief and so on we should nonetheless say that the divine deadlock resides in the fact that the God whose existence is proven is like a monarch whom the assembly makes an absolute one. The very form of confirming the monarch absolute power undermines it. And the political parallel is here crucial since Kierkegaard himself resorts to the comparison between God and king. God exposed to the philosopher's whimsy wit is like a king exposed to the whimsy wit of the popular assembly. But what is the point here? It is simply that in both cases we should reject liberal decadence and opt for absolute monarchy. No I think that for Kierkegaard the properly comical point of incarnation is that God king becomes a beggar a low ordinary human being. So again the point of Kierkegaard is that to put it like this what happens in Christianity it's precisely that people's assembly believers voted down God. No you're no longer our king you can join us but you are one of us. Or to use again a story that I often use in my so that I will not be too long it's okay that I often use in my work or not often once I used it. I think it's a wonderful example of what of the traumatic impact of Christianity. I'm referring to one of the episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents the third year it was late 50s these before they were done in color minutes. It's a story called "The Glass Eye," the opening episode of the third year where Jessica Tandy who is really an interesting actor, she was the one who played in the original version of Samuel Beckett's "Not I," the mouth and at the same time she is the mother in Hitchcock's The Birds, you know this no? Okay. She plays a lone woman desperate who falls for a handsome ventriloquist called Max Collodi of course a reference to Pinocchio. So the point is that every evening she goes to that small theater where the ventriloquist plays with the dummy blah blah. And then I must confess when I saw this episode I was shocked I didn't expect the final reversal. At the end when people leave it's a small hall and in a shy way she approaches the ventriloquist who still sits there with his doll and approaches him and touches him his arm and then something I hope you guessed what happened. She discovers that it was the other way round. The big person collapses and out of the small doll a dwarf a midget crippled dwarf emerges. Like what you thought it's a puppet was the real person and the big real person was the puppet. I think something like this happens in Christianity you know. You speak with Christ you think oh Christ speaks on behalf of the Father. No no the Father is nobody is just a dead doll there is only Christ and so on. So in other words precisely this situation this displacement I hate this word points out nicely the creepiness of a human being. How it's not that there is God. God is a name for what for the divine is the creepy dimension in ourselves. What is creepiness? I already mentioned yesterday I will talk today about my friend Adam Kotsko from Chicago new book still in manuscript Creepiness where he claims that creepy is today's name for the Freudian Unheimliche, uncanny. For the uncanny core of a neighbor. Every neighbor is ultimately creepy. And this is what makes him a neighbor not just a fellow man. You know this is the key distinction for Lacan already for Freud. The fellow man is the one who is like us you can identify with him and so on. Fellow man becomes a becomes a neighbor precisely when he becomes creepy. You know this usual experience like let's say we were to be friends and then after being friends for years you would you were to catch me doing something absolutely disgusting that you would never have imagined me being able to do it. Like you know a blind man walks I kind of put my leg and for a strange way maybe this is my creepiness but I always have this idea when I see a blind man you know. Don't be afraid. I never do it I just follow Plato who said that there are two types of people: those who do horrible things and those who dream about horrible things. No other way. But every time it's true that I see a blind guy I have this idea of let's test him fuck him now will he fall down. I have this suspicion that they bluff you know all of them basically. Okay so let's go on. What I want to say is that this is why sorry to repeat my old story this is why I hope you saw already don't like it so much Stanley Kubrick's classic version of how's the guy called of Stephen King's The Shining. Stephen King didn't like the movie he thought Jack Nicholson was a catastrophe as the actor. And I think he was right. You know why? Because Stephen King made this point that the father figure who at the end you know daddy's coming with a knife terrorizes the family that the whole point is that he is a nice normal father warm and that gradually he becomes a monster a neighbor. But the problem with Jack Nicholson is the moment he enters the room you know what I mean? There is no surprise like you just wait when will he start his his evil smile or whatever. Okay so that's neighbor. What makes a neighbor creepy? Now let's do a little bit of theoretical work and then I give you time to my God is this a terror for me why is this it gets on my nerves all the time this mic here kind of introducing false democracy so that you can come and it's for another meeting them? For them? Yeah. I speak. I'm like a Stalinist leader. I speak for them. I represent them. Fuck them what do they have I I know better than they what is good for them you know. If they come they will just start to fight and so on you know what I mean. Yeah yeah sorry let me go on. So what first point: what makes a neighbor creepy are not his weird acts as such but the impenetrability of the desire that sustains these acts. This is a crucial point. For example it's not a good example of creepiness but nonetheless take Marquis de Sade. You know what's truly enigmatic about him? It's not what he writes about. What he writes about I think is okay it may be shocking but it's boring and flat you know these endless visions. If you want to I know people sometimes say you know if you want to fall asleep and cannot they usually say I don't know count sheep or whatever no. I say read Days of Sodom. After number it gets totally boring. It's just totally mechanic combination you know it's like around I think you take like two virgins, one cow, one old man and a dog and they do it in this way. Then you take two cows, three men and so it's totally boring. The only enigma and Lacan saw this nicely is why did he write about it? You know what I mean? His writing not in some sublime Derridean way, the very act of his compulsion to write. Why did he feel this incredible pressure to go on writing? This doesn't enter the perverse economy. That's his ethical aspect, his true enigma. Which is why if you know the history when he was in that Charenton or where the madhouse in the last years of his life, what really hit him there was not that he wasn't able to have sex or of orgies, more or less he was able. But that towards the end they took paper and pen from him. You know this is the enigma. This is the creepy moment. I mean okay you're a pervert you torture people you rape them it's disgusting but it's not creepy. It's not enigmatic. The enigmatic is this. So the question is: what does a creepy neighbor want? What does he get out of it? You know we suspect that another person is creepy precisely when a guy is doing something but all of a sudden you discover that it is not for the obvious reason that he is doing that. Here is a quote from Kotsko longer but very simple one. Quote In the case of a sleazy guy who insists on propositioning every woman he meets the element of enigma may seem to be missing. Okay he's asking every woman can I fuck you blah blah so okay he wants sex. And yet it seems strange that simply wanting sex would be creepy because a man who politely asks a woman on a date and then accepts the answer is all things being equal definitely not creepy. It may be tasteless it may be intrusive but it's not creepy. What makes the sleazy guy creepy is not that he is simply asking too many women out but that his constant failure seems to indicate that he doesn't care that his methods are ineffective that he always fails. It is as though he's directly getting off on the very act of approaching women with no regard for the ostensible goal of sleeping with them. When we recognize this we can't help but ask but why is he doing it? What is he getting out of it? End quote. You see that's the enigma. And again allow me to repeat at least here already for the fourth fifth time a story by told me by your own British Lacanian Darian Leader where a nice symptom happened to one of his patients he told me so which I think exactly can be read as a defense against his own the patient's own creepiness. I'm sorry if you know the story. He told me that one patient told him of a slip of tongue that happened to him he tried to seduce a lady so they went to a hotel. First down he took her to a restaurant and of course the idea was after a nice meal why don't we jump up to the room. But what happened is that when they entered the restaurant he approached a waiter and instead of saying a table for two he said a bed for two please. Now the point of Darian Leader was that precisely this is not a vulgar Freudian slip in the sense of oh fuck it we know this is just overture I really care about that. But it's exact the opposite. He the guy was secretly afraid that he will enjoy the meal too much you see and that he will forget about his true duty to do it after. So it's as if reminding myself: no I'm not here just to eat like a pig I should spare the energy it's that. In in other words that would have been a you know for example if you are a lady and if I may make a sexist remark there are quite many nice ladies here don't accuse me of being creepy now. If you were wouldn't you feel it creepy if a guy takes you to a restaurant and even if you don't have the intention to make allow him to make love to you later. But okay you eat with him and the whole setting is okay even if I will say no I expect him to make passes or whatever. But again I'm just repeating this situation. If all of a sudden you would have noticed the excessive pleasure of oh why don't we order X in that way and that you would have felt like where am I here? Isn't you know this is creepiness. Here again enters the Lacanian distinction between of course between object of desire and object-cause of desire. Object of desire is what I desire let's say sorry male chauvinist perspective can be others of course sleep with that woman. Object-cause of desire is what makes me desire to do that. And that's for Freud the original perversity of desire is that there is always some pervert excess which makes me desire. And I claim perversion gets open precisely when you directly target when you elevate object-cause of desire into desire itself. Let's say I want to sleep with a lady and what really triggered my desire is stupid example I don't think it really functions today but let us say the way her hair is curled and so on. But you know all would become creepy if okay she says yes let's go to bed and then she lays there expecting me okay now show what kind of a man do do it and I just go on caressing her hair and so on and oh you also want to fuck sorry but I you know like again when what should be the object-cause of desire becomes the thing itself. That's what makes it creepy. Next point. I am not just blaming this pervert situation constellation it can also be given a hysterical turn which is even revolutionary I would say. Namely of course we have this effect of creepiness in the sense of my God it's for you know when you don't know and then you discover that the guy is doing it for some strange eccentric idiosyncratic reason. But how does it work in a non-creepy way? It can work in this way: somebody is doing something and when the effect on you is not creepiness but simply enigma. In the sense of in what sense? Okay Kotsko mentioned Girls, the TV series with that actress author who now published I think a book a bestseller Lena Dunham, no? And she says about her nudity and of course the enigma of that nudity is that I'm sorry again for this male chauvinist remark as a naked woman she is not beautiful to put it mildly no. So okay quote Initially her nudity was aggressively perverse but as Lena Dunham character moves beyond her perverse indulgences in later episodes her nudity takes on a variety of new roles. For instance one scene depicts her getting dressed in the morning after a shower demonstrating her high level of comfort with her live-in boyfriend. Other nude scenes highlight her vulnerability or other emotional states but none of them seem to have the primary goal of sexually arousing the viewer nor of violating their normal expectations of sexual titillation. It is as though the show's aggressive use of nudity had somehow deactivated the customary use of female nudity opening up a space for a more thorough exploration of what nudity could mean as part of the emotional landscape of a scene. End of quote. And I like very much this reading. Of course you can say that but I think it's too simple to say okay the point is simply she offers herself naked because she knows very well that she is not too attractive and but nonetheless I think the effect is genuinely enigmatic. This you know she is doing it but not for this reason nor for that reason why is she doing it and so on and so on. And here we should oppose perversion and hysteria. Hysteria is this perplexity: why is she doing it? But in a pervert there is no perplexity. The very definition for Freud and Lacan of a pervert is: he knows what he wants. This is why incidentally also that's the ABC of psychoanalytic clinic perverts are the most difficult patients. Because you know hysterics are intrigued that's why they're prone to transference and so on while the pervert knows what he wants is basically satisfied and he feels no need in psychoanalysis. But I want to go into this say repeat another old but I claim important point. This is why in contrast to the revolutionary 1960s when it was fashionable to assert perversion against the compromise of hysteria, I think we should reassert hysteria as the original subversive attitude. What do I want to say by it? Usually people claimed at least this was fashionable when I was young and although 60s were supposed to be the big anti sorry pro-feminist epoch of awakened feminism, I think that at least in this mode to relate to perversion to to give preference to perversion over hysteria there was a clear anti-feminist male bias because the idea was this one that a hysterical subject is just a provocateur. You provoke the master but it's always ambiguous you provoke the master but beneath this provocation there is always it lays dormant there a call for an authentic master and so on. You know that a hysterical subject just plays the game: provoke the master but at the same time call for a master while as Freud even unfortunately puts somewhere pervert pervert subject a pervert effectively enacts what hysterics are only dreaming about. So again the idea is: hysterics are these protest guys who don't want to go to the end just playing with the master while perverts are revolutionaries: we do it. No I think we should exactly turn it around. There is a constant in Lacan and Freud already of for example Freud says something beautiful somewhere: he says that in per no nowhere is the unconscious more inaccessible excluded than in perversion. Which is a very surprising statement because you would have thought isn't a pervert the one who precisely brings it all out every dirty blah blah. No there it's totally closed. Why? Now we have to make a next step which is that for Lacan perversion is a transgression of course of explicit rules but what I repeatedly called an inherent transgression is the other obscene side which while apparently transgressing the law sustains it. You know and every institution has this type of perverse rituals. You have this grey domain which is publicly ignored the way you can violate the law and so on but as such it sustains the law. And it's for me as I repeat it for my God almost three decades that this is why the perverse transgression is crucial for the self-reproduction of a legal order. At all levels, from private economy intimate economy to half public okay I will not repeat here these old boring examples that I over-exploit that like pedophilia and Catholic Church. Of course pedophilia is a perversion but I claim it's an institutional perversion and as such part of the church's identity. You cannot say let's erase pedophilia and we will get pure clean church. No you get something else I don't know what probably better than the existing church but not it. And so or like I've written intensely about it you must know the examples for example army or school all this dirty usually with homosexual innuendos if we are in a male community you know all these secret rituals. This is what keeps institutions together. You always need a master can be a master but you need a pervert behind. Even in this most superficial sense. We don't torture we have human rights but let me put it like this: no human rights without Guantanamo if I may put it this way, no where you do your waterboarding or whatever all this. And did you notice the nice irony how I'm horrified by them but nonetheless ISIS did you look see some of those publicly televised recorded beheadings liquidations. Did you notice that the prisoners to be killed are dressed in that yellow dress. You know why? Because it's Guantanamo, no? It's a nice detail nonetheless poetic almost detail. Okay what I want to say is this that we have this is the basic insight of the hysteric provocation and that's why a hysterical subject does not go to the end. The basic hysteric provocation is not oh I want to provoke the master but not quite at the end I will submit. No it's this insight that direct transgression is inherent doesn't really overcome the system. That's the big hysterical insight, a very deep insight. Which is enacted there. And that's the okay I will not go into other Lacanian details you must know them which can be beautifully deployed how for Lacan that's why subject as such is hysterical because as Lacan put it: subject is not an object. This simply means you are a subject insofar as you cannot properly locate yourself as an object. And this hystericizes you. You know all the classical examples like Juliet to Romeo: why am I that name? Again I develop this point often just to recapitulate it for you. That's why this was first developed by my good friend Slovene part of my Slovene Lacanian gang Mladen Dolar of how hysteria is the necessary supplement to what Althusser called ideological interpellation. The ideological interpellation hails you as a subject provides your social identity: you are whatever you are a clerk mother teacher pupil blah blah. The hysterical question is: why am I what you are saying that I am? And this a little bit of this you find it also in this can be pretty annoying feminine question. I wonder women should say if the same goes for men. You know this eternal torturing question of a woman: Tell me why do you love me. I mean don't I explode. Okay the although I'm tempted again to repeat my joke to say okay let's approach it in a perverse way with a bureaucratic way I will explain why I love you. Let's make a list: your eyes nine point, your hair eight points, your legs seven, your breasts beautiful ten. You see my criterion for love is the average must be so that's why I love you you know you pass it. But of course that's by definition not love. And that's what also what hysterics know. You know that the true love is triggered the object cause of true love is always a mark of imperfection. You know to love really someone you must find something which disturbs you and then as a reaction you say: in spite of this I love her. Okay I will not go into this it was said enough. What again I want to say here is that and this will be my towards the end then I nonetheless want to leave you some time for debate. Along this lines back to Adam Kotsko he characterizes hysteria as a quote A way of creeping out the social order itself. And just as in the case of the individual psyche the social order is only susceptible of being crept out due to the creepiness it carries within itself. Under normal circumstances the social order appears to be obsessive in structure opting for certain acceptable desires while repressing or excluding others. Yet from the hysteric's perspective the most salient fact about the social order is the way it is continually setting us up to fail so that it can even seem that the social order needs transgression and the illicit creepy enjoyment that it provides the transgression. The social order's wink at and nod of unofficial permission toward our creepy indulgences simultaneously makes social constraints more bearable and binds us more closely to the social order insofar as it makes those creepy indulgences possible. In short the hysteric is uniquely positioned to see that the pervert has no point. End quote. My comment: hysteria is as such always a historical formation. It reacts to the predominant mode of ideological identification. This historical approach also allows us to reject the standard argument according to which in today's permissive era we no longer get hysterical patients whose symptoms are caused by the oppressed sexuality. That's the standard line no that hysteria as the protest against strict social prohibitions oppressions and so on this belongs to Freudian Victorian era what but today it's permissiveness and that today this is why today so-called borderline is replacing more and more hysteria. But from the Lacanian standpoint I think borderline is precisely today's name for hysteria. It's hysteria in our post-authoritarian age when the traditional master is more and more replaced by a neutral expert legitimized by his or her scientific knowledge. Let me here is the last quote from Adam Kotsko: thankfully the social order no longer explicitly backs women so completely into a corner as in the age of the housewife. Yet women still face conflicting pressures such as those that Carrie, Carrie from Sex and the City, feverishly attempts to navigate in her quest to avoid being that girl in Sex and the City. Indeed some of the contradictions have even been intensified and complicated. As for example women are expected to excel in professional life while still meeting traditional requirements of motherhood. If anything women suffer from having too many mutually contradictory outlets for their desire. Hence the contemporary manifestation of hysteria is not the psychosomatic intrusion of the body into the social order. Like you know the most elementary case Freud's of Dora: she was coughing why? She dreamt about fellatio ah cannot even imagine so it returned as a bodily system. No. In the face of the impossible demand to have it all you are not only allowed to but even pressed to be everything: to make a career to be a beautiful woman good mother and so on. In the face of this impossible demand the hysteric effectively goes on strike refusing desire altogether. I think this is the best definition maybe some of you know it better that you can provide of borderline. Borderline is precisely desire on strike as the contemporary the contemporary form of hysteria. So you know what I did it over one hour and a half and let's go a little bit more but I feel so bad for doing what I do that is to say talking too much so that why don't you I mean now we have this stupid time for democracy or whatever this disgusting demagogic provocation here no. Please shout if you want. How do you prefer? Now it's so stupid that I don't have a master. I am really someone to tell like you are there can you shout loud enough or you come here you decide. How do we do it? Shout from here. Shout is better. No but the point is that he is there. Yeah. Shout. Okay so that shout. You raise the hand no? Didn't you? I just want to ask you some question. Yeah but that's what I mean it's time for questioning but shout so that people will hear you you know. I just want to say that I have read many books from Alasdair MacIntyre you know. Sorry which one? Alasdair MacIntyre. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. And as I know that he wrote many books or works about Marxism in his early. Sorry about? Marxism. Marxism. Yeah Marxism yeah yeah. And as I know that he use a very important item is practice. Practice is also a a very important item in Marxism and he use practice to build his revolutionary Aristotelianism. So may I ask that how you think about the practice this item in Marxism and do you think that there are many relation has something to do with the revolutionary in Marxism. Yeah but yeah it's a nice question. Okay I mean again the only problem is to answer it properly it means another talk. But what so I will just give you some maybe surprising hints. First I think that it was demonstrated by Marxists who really knew about it like the young Lukács and some in the Frankfurt school and so on that practice is not to be opposed to theory. So the first thing is to totally reject this entire topic of oh you're just in your ivory tower of theory we need practical engagement and so on and so on. The worst conformism is blind practice and not to be blind in practice you need theory. So practice the relevance of practice is for me that precisely you refuse to be as it were blackmailed by practice. You know I often use this example of charity today. That's for me practice as it were. Like my God what do you bullshit here about Lacan Hegel all these distinctions when children are starving in Somalia and so on and so on. Why is this ideology at its purest? Because the message between the lines is: do something don't think too much. You know I mean I had some quotes from people like Bill Gates and so on who all make this point. For example people are dying by millions starving today why don't we just all get together NGOs people charity states rich people and do something. Let's not lose time with all those debates about capitalism communism ideology and so on. So for me the first step toward authentic practice is theory. Theory without practice is we know why and this is the the core of Marxist critique of ideology. Ideology is not a crazy theory which is obfuscating what we're doing in practice. Ideology at its most radical is part of your daily practice. You live Althusser pointed this nicely we live ideology in our daily life. You know for me for example racism is not nobody almost nobody is racist today in this direct sense whatever no. True racism is when you true racism for me today is is not to say I don't know Arabs are stupid terrorists fanatics Islam is bad terror. No true racism is to say what Netanyahu and all of them are saying you know: Islam is a great religion but my God the way and then you go into this for example racism is for me to say I love them but this but you know: their food smells bad I don't like the sound of their music and so on and so on. Racism as ideology is why do you find something in the other's way of life intolerable. This whole structure of envy hatred fascination and so on. And so for me again I don't fetishize practice. I'm even ready to go here a step further where probably no one will follow me. You know again I refer to my friend Mladen Dolar who made recently in a debate we had in Slovenia a wonderful observation. You know that this 11th thesis you know philosophers have only interpreted the world the point is also to change it no? Okay let me ask yourself I'm sorry if I already repeat this point here maybe a year ago let me ask you an extremely stupid naive question: Who are these stupid philosophers who just interpreted the world? All of them as far as I know of course not in the sense of Marx's practice but practically all of them wanted to change the world. Plato we know it, Republic was a blueprint to change and you know the story he even went to Syracuse to Sicily to convince the local tyrant there to reconstruct his state in this sense. They practically all wanted to change the world. Spinoza has a project Kant has a project all all philosophers had a project how to change the world. Now I will become really evil. Except one. Absolutely no. Hegel which is the greatest inspiration for Marx no. With Hegel you definitely don't have this. He doesn't want to change the world. That's why and that's the beauty he was the most valuable source for actual revolutionary practice. Or to put it in another way to really change things and that's what I will improvise if I will still survive and not have a heart attack at today at LSE at that talk. That's why to really change things you must go through that point of hopelessness where you lose your dreams and so on you know. So let's not just first to really change the world you have to see how what spontaneously comes to you as the way to change the world how to renounce that and so on which is why and that was the greatness of Lukács in History and Class Consciousness to describe which is why an a theoretical what Lukács calls self-consciousness where you in an act of self-reflection become aware of what you are as a historical agent. This is the greatest practical act that you can imagine. And I will go even yeah sorry immediately even further here. That's why what I like in Adorno is this insight which I think is more true than ever apropos today's interactive art and so on. You know like when all this new digitalization began at the very beginning in 60s Hans Magnus Enzensberger German moderately leftist cultural theorist made this point about how in today's culture we are too much passive consumerists and he saw this is typical modernist leftist appropriation he saw in interactive media a way nonetheless to assume an active role we just don't stare at the screen we co co-create it and so on and so on. But already Adorno saw something very nicely that if anything in today's consumerist society we are not passive consumers we are all the time solicited involved in pseudo-activity and so on and so on. As Adorno put it nicely the most difficult thing today is not to be active but to be authentically passive. Maybe this is not the ultimate act I'm not saying we just sit back and that's the big revolution you know but like to step back and open yourself in an authentically passive way to this situation. Which is why to stop to close with my last joke which I repeat I think in my Lenin book on Marx like that's the Marx that I love. You know there are some letters my God I think I found it I don't know where from when it looked for a moment that there will be a European revolution and Marx wrote to Engels a letter which is a letter of pure panic. He says: Oh my God why revolution already now let them wait I haven't yet finished my Capital and so on. That's authentic Marx you know. Not that oh practical activity whatever and so on. Today we have to emphasize this because we do live in a hyperactive society you know. We are passive at a more radical level. The form of how we are unable to change anything is precisely because through our hyperactivity we reproduce the way things are. I know I didn't answer you but fuck it that's life. Sorry there was a green guy there and then first row. You should shout I'm half blind. Okay you begin the green guy. You're talking about philosophy and changing the world? Yeah. I'm very intrigued by your relationship quote unquote with with Chomsky as two at you and Chomsky's work I I really respect and admire but I feel that there is this standoff between you. I know he accuses you of posturing. And I don't know whether this is male soap opera or or maybe when you when you become a very big public intellectual you can afford to sort of say those things. But it really saddens me that two people who are sort of very respected leaders of the left-leaning intelligentsia don't seem to have a relationship other than to sort of slag each other off. No okay I will a very briefly I will clarify it. As you know it all happened maybe not in this room but at Birkbeck I think two years or was it a year a little bit over a year ago somebody asked me did you hear about Chomsky's attack on you? Because the first move was made by Chomsky gave some radio interview where he totally totally tried to squash me. Like then because then the the journalist ask him okay but okay you don't agree with him theoretically but what about some progressive political collective acts? Would you be ready to collaborate with him there? And Chomsky said no absolutely no nowhere and so on and so on. So I then I didn't know anything about it I just in a crazy shocked way reacted here. And I was pretty pissed off when then somebody someone transcribed this and then it started to circulate as I my my response to Chomsky. So then of course he did back and then the only thing that I count it's if you noticed it is done in an extremely respectful
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way. It's my second reaction which was a proper text which is very respectful towards Chomsky and I just
way. It's my second reaction which was a proper text which is very respectful towards Chomsky and I just
Slavoj Žižek
go into where I don't agree with him. And I emphasize:
go into where I don't agree with him. And I emphasize:
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what he is doing his concrete analysis is great and so on and so on. But for me how should I put it we can learn a lot from him and so on. And he was so crazy when I said there is no critique of ideology in his work and in one of his replies he wrote: but that's all I am doing. No exactly not. You know why not? Because if you look for example at his critical analysis of American establishment aren't they naive in what sense? It simply he is denouncing lies, dispelling
what he is doing his concrete analysis is great and so on and so on. But for me how should I put it we can learn a lot from him and so on. And he was so crazy when I said there is no critique of ideology in his work and in one of his replies he wrote: but that's all I am doing. No exactly not. You know why not? Because if you look for example at his critical analysis of American establishment aren't they naive in what sense? It simply he is denouncing lies, dispelling
Slavoj Žižek
mystifications and so on and so on. He displays all the hypocrisy and so on. But for me the enigma of ideology is not we all know this that people lie all the time. But what do you have to believe sincerely in order to lie like that? How should I put it? That's the mystery of ideology. You know for example we know that Dick Cheney was cheating and so on. But you know cheating people are even more naive I claim and cynics and so on. So this this aspect is for me me he is a simple and we need this. He is just and we are now even put together. I was glad to see now somebody told me that there is now news that there is some action in support of Snowden and we are even mentioned as a couple. Chomsky and me are doing it and so on and so on. Because this is so one difference that he is you know what I didn't want to confirm who told he said I did never say what but I know who you know I can say this here. Colin Robinson the ex-Verso editor who now works for New Books or whatever some American publisher, he told me two years ago that he had a lunch with Chomsky and that Chomsky told him that basically today things are so cynical that we don't have to reject refute any ideology, that today's ideology doesn't even pretend to take itself seriously. Like when United States say we fight for freedom democracy ignore it it's ridiculous. We just have to make it known to people to disclose secret I mean to inform people what is going on. This I don't believe it. I think first people know a lot of it. Here I even had a slight very friendly not even really disagreement with Julian Assange. He is here to Chomskyan for me because he is doing a great thing but he still thinks: My God people have to know this. My cynical view is that most of it okay not in this detailed form but wait a minute was any of us so stupid that you or he or she didn't know that probably we are controlled and so on. Doesn't a certain amount of power confer this notion of transcendence on intellectuals like you and Chomsky so you can't see each other? You've reached a certain I mean here I would be a little bit more arrogant and I would say I can see him. I don't have any problems there I must say openly I hated my father. No no no and it wasn't that then I hated him while he was alive and then years later you know I started to cry oh why didn't I embrace him when he was dying. I remember my father was dying in a hospital in the morning they called me from the hospital: Your father is dead. I said will you take care of the corpse, thanks, yes, boom and I continue writing my book. Never did I have this moment of oh dad why didn't I embrace you the last time I saw you. I'm a Christian here you know. You are we are here Holy Spirit you are my family. I don't okay I talk too much. You and then there was somebody there please. Now I have to deal with your problem in between yes. Sure. Uh I um I like what you do with the revolutionary core of Christianity as you put it. But I have two issues with it which um I may have been asked before but I haven't really found an answer. First of all um what is religion exactly doing? I mean is it a nice story that illuminates these issues that you're bringing up or is it something else? Very good question. And then second of all what would a society or a movement or something look like that sustains the assassination of the big other or whatever it is that you see in Christianity? It's not so much an assassination it's like a suicide more but okay whatever yeah. Okay no of course again you ask the key question in the good sense. I mean to answer this it's again two hours at least. But my brief answer I tried more or less to answer this at the other conference that actuality of theologico-political no I agree you ask the key question which is: when we leftists refer to religion in a not just critical way are we just playing this patronizing game? Like in stupid countries they are not but I'm imitating an attitude. Like Latin America you still need to mobilize Christianity to to make people revolutionary but we enlightened Europeans we don't. Is it just this? Or is it something that we can genuinely accept in religion? And yes I'm not just a manipulator. I am an atheist but two things. First I claim my reference here is Rowan Williams. I quoted him who in his I don't know which book, he I think in his book on Dostoevsky, he says that he refers to some British novelists, Catholic novelists and say what makes them religious. And he says not any positive vision of divinity or whatever but just this fundamental sense of displacement discontent something is wrong with this world of ours. And I asked him this and he told me at least maybe out of politeness you never know that he agrees with me that this is how I read negative theology. Not that bullshit you know God is beyond of determination but that before God comes a void negativity we you know like inconsistency and so on and this is the fundamental theological experience. It comes before asserting in like to put it in this way before having a God you must open up the space for God. And you can have that space then also without God. That's my definition of you know. Along this lines the second thing is that then we go specifically to
mystifications and so on and so on. He displays all the hypocrisy and so on. But for me the enigma of ideology is not we all know this that people lie all the time. But what do you have to believe sincerely in order to lie like that? How should I put it? That's the mystery of ideology. You know for example we know that Dick Cheney was cheating and so on. But you know cheating people are even more naive I claim and cynics and so on. So this this aspect is for me me he is a simple and we need this. He is just and we are now even put together. I was glad to see now somebody told me that there is now news that there is some action in support of Snowden and we are even mentioned as a couple. Chomsky and me are doing it and so on and so on. Because this is so one difference that he is you know what I didn't want to confirm who told he said I did never say what but I know who you know I can say this here. Colin Robinson the ex-Verso editor who now works for New Books or whatever some American publisher, he told me two years ago that he had a lunch with Chomsky and that Chomsky told him that basically today things are so cynical that we don't have to reject refute any ideology, that today's ideology doesn't even pretend to take itself seriously. Like when United States say we fight for freedom democracy ignore it it's ridiculous. We just have to make it known to people to disclose secret I mean to inform people what is going on. This I don't believe it. I think first people know a lot of it. Here I even had a slight very friendly not even really disagreement with Julian Assange. He is here to Chomskyan for me because he is doing a great thing but he still thinks: My God people have to know this. My cynical view is that most of it okay not in this detailed form but wait a minute was any of us so stupid that you or he or she didn't know that probably we are controlled and so on. Doesn't a certain amount of power confer this notion of transcendence on intellectuals like you and Chomsky so you can't see each other? You've reached a certain I mean here I would be a little bit more arrogant and I would say I can see him. I don't have any problems there I must say openly I hated my father. No no no and it wasn't that then I hated him while he was alive and then years later you know I started to cry oh why didn't I embrace him when he was dying. I remember my father was dying in a hospital in the morning they called me from the hospital: Your father is dead. I said will you take care of the corpse, thanks, yes, boom and I continue writing my book. Never did I have this moment of oh dad why didn't I embrace you the last time I saw you. I'm a Christian here you know. You are we are here Holy Spirit you are my family. I don't okay I talk too much. You and then there was somebody there please. Now I have to deal with your problem in between yes. Sure. Uh I um I like what you do with the revolutionary core of Christianity as you put it. But I have two issues with it which um I may have been asked before but I haven't really found an answer. First of all um what is religion exactly doing? I mean is it a nice story that illuminates these issues that you're bringing up or is it something else? Very good question. And then second of all what would a society or a movement or something look like that sustains the assassination of the big other or whatever it is that you see in Christianity? It's not so much an assassination it's like a suicide more but okay whatever yeah. Okay no of course again you ask the key question in the good sense. I mean to answer this it's again two hours at least. But my brief answer I tried more or less to answer this at the other conference that actuality of theologico-political no I agree you ask the key question which is: when we leftists refer to religion in a not just critical way are we just playing this patronizing game? Like in stupid countries they are not but I'm imitating an attitude. Like Latin America you still need to mobilize Christianity to to make people revolutionary but we enlightened Europeans we don't. Is it just this? Or is it something that we can genuinely accept in religion? And yes I'm not just a manipulator. I am an atheist but two things. First I claim my reference here is Rowan Williams. I quoted him who in his I don't know which book, he I think in his book on Dostoevsky, he says that he refers to some British novelists, Catholic novelists and say what makes them religious. And he says not any positive vision of divinity or whatever but just this fundamental sense of displacement discontent something is wrong with this world of ours. And I asked him this and he told me at least maybe out of politeness you never know that he agrees with me that this is how I read negative theology. Not that bullshit you know God is beyond of determination but that before God comes a void negativity we you know like inconsistency and so on and this is the fundamental theological experience. It comes before asserting in like to put it in this way before having a God you must open up the space for God. And you can have that space then also without God. That's my definition of you know. Along this lines the second thing is that then we go specifically to
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Christianity because you know Lacan says as I already repeated that the true formula of atheism is not God is dead but
Christianity because you know Lacan says as I already repeated that the true formula of atheism is not God is dead but
Slavoj Žižek
God is unconscious. He means precisely referring back
God is unconscious. He means precisely referring back
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to ideology that we even if we are officially atheists we are we act as if we are religious in our activity and so on and so on and the point is how you overcome that and here I see the legacy of Christianity. Maybe people are always telling me but why don't you also
to ideology that we even if we are officially atheists we are we act as if we are religious in our activity and so on and so on and the point is how you overcome that and here I see the legacy of Christianity. Maybe people are always telling me but why don't you also
Slavoj Žižek
see similar possibilities in other religions and so on and so on? I don't know. I wasn't yet convinced of it. I did I have a great contrary to what some people think I have a great appreciation of Buddhism and so on but it doesn't totally satisfy me. But sorry I'm losing time so that at least one two idiot people I mean you can please. I I was interested in your lecture yesterday and the part that art played in it looking through Pippin at Hegel's failure in relation to class struggle. Um I was interested in the the idea that art has been demoted and we look to science for the absolute. And then I was interested in the way you using Munch and Manet tried to show how art works with what can't be reconciled, the the stain the constant disjuncture. And my question is: do you think that Lacan's work on Sade in relation to sublimation, atheism, the death drive for instance and the way Sade is an adequate way of thinking um art and the absolute in the contemporary situation? This one I cannot answer you but precisely your question sorry I'm sorry to get to point that I made sorry I'm sorry. No just to finish I mean the interesting point about the the question was Lacan on sublimation in relation to Sade. As you said is not his erotics, not his social theory, it's the fact that he pushes the literary signifier but not as a literary literary theorist or practitioner but because he's working with his symptom. So he changed it doesn't change the object he changes the aim. He gets into writing and finally what satisfies his drive is writing. Yeah yeah. No longer what the original object of damaging young girls and so on. So there's a possible for the potential to change not only the drive but ethics. Yeah of course yeah. So I just wonder whether you think that um Lacan's theory of sublimation indexed to the death drive is an adequate way of thinking art and the absolute in our contemporary situation? I now I will be totally honest to answer you now directly these are such fundamental points is beyond my scope now. You know why? Because here I found a certain maybe I'm wrong not so much tension as undecidability, non-clarity how however you call it in Lacan because I think that too many readings of Lacan, mine included, fell did fall into this trap of bad desire versus good drive you know. But I think that ultimately Lacan doesn't privilege drive against desire as if you know desire is still attached to the law caught in some dialectic master but truly elementary the zero level is drive. I think that there is a short text in Écrits on from Freud's Trieb to the desire of the analyst. Where nonetheless desire returns as this strange desire of the analyst and it's desire not drive. So along this lines I don't think some people are fascinated
see similar possibilities in other religions and so on and so on? I don't know. I wasn't yet convinced of it. I did I have a great contrary to what some people think I have a great appreciation of Buddhism and so on but it doesn't totally satisfy me. But sorry I'm losing time so that at least one two idiot people I mean you can please. I I was interested in your lecture yesterday and the part that art played in it looking through Pippin at Hegel's failure in relation to class struggle. Um I was interested in the the idea that art has been demoted and we look to science for the absolute. And then I was interested in the way you using Munch and Manet tried to show how art works with what can't be reconciled, the the stain the constant disjuncture. And my question is: do you think that Lacan's work on Sade in relation to sublimation, atheism, the death drive for instance and the way Sade is an adequate way of thinking um art and the absolute in the contemporary situation? This one I cannot answer you but precisely your question sorry I'm sorry to get to point that I made sorry I'm sorry. No just to finish I mean the interesting point about the the question was Lacan on sublimation in relation to Sade. As you said is not his erotics, not his social theory, it's the fact that he pushes the literary signifier but not as a literary literary theorist or practitioner but because he's working with his symptom. So he changed it doesn't change the object he changes the aim. He gets into writing and finally what satisfies his drive is writing. Yeah yeah. No longer what the original object of damaging young girls and so on. So there's a possible for the potential to change not only the drive but ethics. Yeah of course yeah. So I just wonder whether you think that um Lacan's theory of sublimation indexed to the death drive is an adequate way of thinking art and the absolute in our contemporary situation? I now I will be totally honest to answer you now directly these are such fundamental points is beyond my scope now. You know why? Because here I found a certain maybe I'm wrong not so much tension as undecidability, non-clarity how however you call it in Lacan because I think that too many readings of Lacan, mine included, fell did fall into this trap of bad desire versus good drive you know. But I think that ultimately Lacan doesn't privilege drive against desire as if you know desire is still attached to the law caught in some dialectic master but truly elementary the zero level is drive. I think that there is a short text in Écrits on from Freud's Trieb to the desire of the analyst. Where nonetheless desire returns as this strange desire of the analyst and it's desire not drive. So along this lines I don't think some people are fascinated
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by this idea of saying you know in
by this idea of saying you know in
Slavoj Žižek
desire you still have lost object fascination and so on endless while in drive you find satisfaction self-enclosing. I think that both desire and drive are like in parallax two two visions of some more radical deadlock however you call it and so on and so on. I don't think you can reduce one to the other. But I think the it's very clear in the ethics. Ethics Seminar Seminar that um sublimation in Sade and for Lacan radical forms of sublimation linked to the death drive is a move from say pathology to the universal. That I agree. Although as you know It's also the bearing just one more point I'm sorry see whether you whether it's the bearing of um in Antigone transgenerational contamination it's coming to terms with. But okay I will not repeat the old stuff I agree with you but you know probably better than me that in ethics precisely there is not yet drive. It's a pure desire. And I think this is how we should read my old point: you remember on the very last page even the last or one before the last paragraph of Seminar where Lacan says the desire of analyst is not a pure desire. Ce n'est pas un désir pur. Now as always with Lacan you can you should ask the totally stupid question: Who is that idiot who ever claimed that desire of the analyst is a pure desire? The answer is: Lacan himself four years earlier in Antigone. Which is why maybe I'm wrong but now Antigone is almost my taboo you know the one which should be ex sorry not Antigone the the Ethics Seminar. Because precisely I think that what Lacan does in next seminar, Transference, when he analyzes Claudel, L'Otage, Coufontaine, Sygne there it's precisely what what eludes
desire you still have lost object fascination and so on endless while in drive you find satisfaction self-enclosing. I think that both desire and drive are like in parallax two two visions of some more radical deadlock however you call it and so on and so on. I don't think you can reduce one to the other. But I think the it's very clear in the ethics. Ethics Seminar Seminar that um sublimation in Sade and for Lacan radical forms of sublimation linked to the death drive is a move from say pathology to the universal. That I agree. Although as you know It's also the bearing just one more point I'm sorry see whether you whether it's the bearing of um in Antigone transgenerational contamination it's coming to terms with. But okay I will not repeat the old stuff I agree with you but you know probably better than me that in ethics precisely there is not yet drive. It's a pure desire. And I think this is how we should read my old point: you remember on the very last page even the last or one before the last paragraph of Seminar where Lacan says the desire of analyst is not a pure desire. Ce n'est pas un désir pur. Now as always with Lacan you can you should ask the totally stupid question: Who is that idiot who ever claimed that desire of the analyst is a pure desire? The answer is: Lacan himself four years earlier in Antigone. Which is why maybe I'm wrong but now Antigone is almost my taboo you know the one which should be ex sorry not Antigone the the Ethics Seminar. Because precisely I think that what Lacan does in next seminar, Transference, when he analyzes Claudel, L'Otage, Coufontaine, Sygne there it's precisely what what eludes
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Antigone,
Antigone,
Slavoj Žižek
what is still false in Antigone. I think that that would have been much closer it's precisely just a way of you know this non, le non, the the no of
what is still false in Antigone. I think that that would have been much closer it's precisely just a way of you know this non, le non, the the no of
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Sygne.
Sygne.
Slavoj Žižek
That's Lacan moved forward. Which is why yes I agree with you about sublimation and so on and we would have I was going to ask whether you thought that the absolute in the contemporary. That's my question: the absolute, this question of whether art we look to science for the absolute or whether art in the contemporary situation can actually take up what can't be reconciled, the absolute important questions whether art how art might use sublimation. Ah no no of course no no no my answer is this one. Of course of course it can. But where? I mean I would where I mean I'm more and more very critical of contemporary art like all these fashionable artists like Damian Hirst and so on. My God when people take power in my Stalinist universe you know I say: Hi Damian here you have a first-class ticket to Siberia and one-way ticket no. You know I I I I don't know it's so of course it still does play this role art but one should have been very precise here where how. I think it's more in glimpses here and there. You cannot simply say this orientation is the proper one or whatever you know. I just have great doubts about conceptual art. I don't think it works to the end. It did play a certain role. Sorry have to you are lady the black lady. I wasn't going to ask this but you did mention Adorno earlier and it falls right into this. Yeah. Um I'm thinking about the material
That's Lacan moved forward. Which is why yes I agree with you about sublimation and so on and we would have I was going to ask whether you thought that the absolute in the contemporary. That's my question: the absolute, this question of whether art we look to science for the absolute or whether art in the contemporary situation can actually take up what can't be reconciled, the absolute important questions whether art how art might use sublimation. Ah no no of course no no no my answer is this one. Of course of course it can. But where? I mean I would where I mean I'm more and more very critical of contemporary art like all these fashionable artists like Damian Hirst and so on. My God when people take power in my Stalinist universe you know I say: Hi Damian here you have a first-class ticket to Siberia and one-way ticket no. You know I I I I don't know it's so of course it still does play this role art but one should have been very precise here where how. I think it's more in glimpses here and there. You cannot simply say this orientation is the proper one or whatever you know. I just have great doubts about conceptual art. I don't think it works to the end. It did play a certain role. Sorry have to you are lady the black lady. I wasn't going to ask this but you did mention Adorno earlier and it falls right into this. Yeah. Um I'm thinking about the material
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production of art now and how much um it's oriented towards education and um sort of like political and social appeals, grants that kind
production of art now and how much um it's oriented towards education and um sort of like political and social appeals, grants that kind
Slavoj Žižek
of thing and like sort of I don't know
of thing and like sort of I don't know
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moralistic and almost educational. Um and I was thinking about this idea of like interactive art.
moralistic and almost educational. Um and I was thinking about this idea of like interactive art.
Slavoj Žižek
It seems like art these days is entangled in social and affective labor and some form of kind of um moral basically ideological orientation in society. So I'm curious how um why you'd bring up Adorno in terms of possibly this idea of autonomy um and whether at all that connects to what you said earlier about borderline? I see your point. No here again I can just give you some confused points. The first one is when you say how art is today blah. You know what I hate in modern art is best exemplified in these institutions of Biennale and so on. It's they have two features. On the one hand it's part of a intellectual fashion that they proclaim themselves critical extremely revolutionary and even analyzing the way they in advance admit but we are ourselves always already manipulated by capitalist market and so on. And nothing changes. It still works. I mean I for me today's art Biennales especially when they play this politically correct anti-Eurocentric role and so on it all appears so open anti-racist and so on but it's so perfectly integrated into world system of art marketplace. So when you the second problem I have with this what you mentioned this how it is included educational into political process. This is the big problem I already had with Brecht looked. He had this idea: learning play and so on. But how did Brecht's plays when they were performed really work? A very vulgar question. I claim there was never a moment when you can really say they were performed to the workers public, they mobilized the workers and so on. Maybe there were some mass performances just before '33 in Germany of some of the learning
It seems like art these days is entangled in social and affective labor and some form of kind of um moral basically ideological orientation in society. So I'm curious how um why you'd bring up Adorno in terms of possibly this idea of autonomy um and whether at all that connects to what you said earlier about borderline? I see your point. No here again I can just give you some confused points. The first one is when you say how art is today blah. You know what I hate in modern art is best exemplified in these institutions of Biennale and so on. It's they have two features. On the one hand it's part of a intellectual fashion that they proclaim themselves critical extremely revolutionary and even analyzing the way they in advance admit but we are ourselves always already manipulated by capitalist market and so on. And nothing changes. It still works. I mean I for me today's art Biennales especially when they play this politically correct anti-Eurocentric role and so on it all appears so open anti-racist and so on but it's so perfectly integrated into world system of art marketplace. So when you the second problem I have with this what you mentioned this how it is included educational into political process. This is the big problem I already had with Brecht looked. He had this idea: learning play and so on. But how did Brecht's plays when they were performed really work? A very vulgar question. I claim there was never a moment when you can really say they were performed to the workers public, they mobilized the workers and so on. Maybe there were some mass performances just before '33 in Germany of some of the learning
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plays but it's very interesting to read the reactions to them. Workers were mostly shocked and considered them way too authoritarian. It's interesting that Jasager,
plays but it's very interesting to read the reactions to them. Workers were mostly shocked and considered them way too authoritarian. It's interesting that Jasager,
Slavoj Žižek
that
that
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how to call it the the the the guy who says yes this first learning play with that authoritarian message, it was better received by the extreme
how to call it the the the the guy who says yes this first learning play with that authoritarian message, it was better received by the extreme
Slavoj Žižek
right who saw you know the true spirit of self-sacrifice.
right who saw you know the true spirit of self-sacrifice.
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I'm not saying they were right. I'm just saying that when we talk about art playing an educational role and so on and so on here I am for practice and empiricist. I would really like to see what does this really mean, how does it really function? It's very tragic if you look for example and I spoke with people who worked there at Brecht Berliner Ensemble Theater in Berlin after World War. Almost the majority of the public were West German from West Berlin tourists. It was earning money from it. Absolutely never functioned in this way described by Brecht. The other problem with and that's what we were my with written material practice reality and
I'm not saying they were right. I'm just saying that when we talk about art playing an educational role and so on and so on here I am for practice and empiricist. I would really like to see what does this really mean, how does it really function? It's very tragic if you look for example and I spoke with people who worked there at Brecht Berliner Ensemble Theater in Berlin after World War. Almost the majority of the public were West German from West Berlin tourists. It was earning money from it. Absolutely never functioned in this way described by Brecht. The other problem with and that's what we were my with written material practice reality and
Slavoj Žižek
so on is that as I often already repeated I think and this is the big confusion who is that American theorist who wrote the book The Return of the Real? Hal Foster or who? You know that all this Brechtian topic of as if if you are too identified emotionally and so on it's somehow bourgeois ideology that you have to be aware of the production process, that the truly subversive thing is to remind you that it's just on stage or whatever. I think this precisely is not a return to the real but an escape from the real. The real is precisely that abyss of that imaginary abyss. You know for example I often make this joke. I'm sorry if it sounds tasteless to you but this is why in pornography, hardcore pornography this is prohibited to get too immersed.
so on is that as I often already repeated I think and this is the big confusion who is that American theorist who wrote the book The Return of the Real? Hal Foster or who? You know that all this Brechtian topic of as if if you are too identified emotionally and so on it's somehow bourgeois ideology that you have to be aware of the production process, that the truly subversive thing is to remind you that it's just on stage or whatever. I think this precisely is not a return to the real but an escape from the real. The real is precisely that abyss of that imaginary abyss. You know for example I often make this joke. I'm sorry if it sounds tasteless to you but this is why in pornography, hardcore pornography this is prohibited to get too immersed.
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And this is why I think it's an ultra-censored genre hardcore pornography. Because it all in different ways wants to remind you again
And this is why I think it's an ultra-censored genre hardcore pornography. Because it all in different ways wants to remind you again
Slavoj Žižek
and again
and again
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this is just a joke don't take it seriously and so on. This is my old story
this is just a joke don't take it seriously and so on. This is my old story
Slavoj Žižek
I'm sorry you all know it how when I was young, thirty years ago this distanciation was enacted through stupid stupidity of the story. Stories you know the narrative which accompanies a hardcore movie. You know you don't just show people fucking there you have to somehow introduce it in a narrative. They were so stupid that I am absolutely convinced that it cannot be it's not that simply people were so stupid who did it. There was some my old joke I'm sorry to bore you with it you must have heard it like I remember even now I'm traumatized: one when the plumber comes home and says to the housewife I fixed that hole in the kitchen and the housewife says I have another hole to be fixed can you also you are embarrassed. And I'm
I'm sorry you all know it how when I was young, thirty years ago this distanciation was enacted through stupid stupidity of the story. Stories you know the narrative which accompanies a hardcore movie. You know you don't just show people fucking there you have to somehow introduce it in a narrative. They were so stupid that I am absolutely convinced that it cannot be it's not that simply people were so stupid who did it. There was some my old joke I'm sorry to bore you with it you must have heard it like I remember even now I'm traumatized: one when the plumber comes home and says to the housewife I fixed that hole in the kitchen and the housewife says I have another hole to be fixed can you also you are embarrassed. And I'm
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saying this cannot be that people are simply so stupid. It had to derealize it to remind you and today it's even worse because as you know
saying this cannot be that people are simply so stupid. It had to derealize it to remind you and today it's even worse because as you know
Slavoj Žižek
so I was told I'm too old to watch them not that I have any problems that today's hardcore form is so-called Gonzo I think which is they don't even allow even the totally ridiculous fiction is too much. Gonzo means they have to remind you all the time you know like the actors look into the camera even interact: "Hi,
so I was told I'm too old to watch them not that I have any problems that today's hardcore form is so-called Gonzo I think which is they don't even allow even the totally ridiculous fiction is too much. Gonzo means they have to remind you all the time you know like the actors look into the camera even interact: "Hi,
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is it okay this? Should I move my leg?" as if as if as if where does this terrible fear come from people should not take us seriously and so on. So in other words I think we should totally drop this maybe even pseudo-Brechtian topic of somehow to you know Ray Chow she is a good Chinese cultural theorist
is it okay this? Should I move my leg?" as if as if as if where does this terrible fear come from people should not take us seriously and so on. So in other words I think we should totally drop this maybe even pseudo-Brechtian topic of somehow to you know Ray Chow she is a good Chinese cultural theorist
Slavoj Žižek
I think she works with Fred Jameson at Duke, she wrote a wonderful text of how what appeared thirty forty years ago the best of this Brecht Verfremdung, explanation, good distance and so on that now it serves perfectly contemporary cynical ideology. And she even gives some wonderful examples of how even the most popular the most commercialized pop culture functions like that like she draws attention to what I've seen in the states: you have already meta-reflexive commercial publicity which take the form of the debate about how to make a publicity. Like I saw a publicity clip where people simply debate: we should do publicity for this product should we do it we do it in this way in that way and so on and so on. So I think again that we should drop this top. It's the same motive that I always developed you know. This is part of ideology, this is not realism, this strategy which was used already by that's why I hate him, Marcus Aurelius the emperor. You know he has this idea like when you think about sex to get redeemed to get free of this false attraction of sex just think materially what happens. You are embracing a woman beautiful here, think about what is two inches inside. All the glands, shit collecting whatever and so on. Or think about what will happen with her beautiful body I don't know thirty years on you know. Or or think about what happens when you have orgasm: just some stupid ejaculation, some disgusting slimy juice whatever. I I think that this is the escape from the real. The real here is not this stupid reality of the body. So in in this sense I think that this brutal cynical realism "cut the crap, take things the way they are" is the ultimate ideological naivety, no? I'm sorry don't kill me I have to run. It's quarter past. But see you again. Thanks very much. Because unfortunately I have to prepare.
I think she works with Fred Jameson at Duke, she wrote a wonderful text of how what appeared thirty forty years ago the best of this Brecht Verfremdung, explanation, good distance and so on that now it serves perfectly contemporary cynical ideology. And she even gives some wonderful examples of how even the most popular the most commercialized pop culture functions like that like she draws attention to what I've seen in the states: you have already meta-reflexive commercial publicity which take the form of the debate about how to make a publicity. Like I saw a publicity clip where people simply debate: we should do publicity for this product should we do it we do it in this way in that way and so on and so on. So I think again that we should drop this top. It's the same motive that I always developed you know. This is part of ideology, this is not realism, this strategy which was used already by that's why I hate him, Marcus Aurelius the emperor. You know he has this idea like when you think about sex to get redeemed to get free of this false attraction of sex just think materially what happens. You are embracing a woman beautiful here, think about what is two inches inside. All the glands, shit collecting whatever and so on. Or think about what will happen with her beautiful body I don't know thirty years on you know. Or or think about what happens when you have orgasm: just some stupid ejaculation, some disgusting slimy juice whatever. I I think that this is the escape from the real. The real here is not this stupid reality of the body. So in in this sense I think that this brutal cynical realism "cut the crap, take things the way they are" is the ultimate ideological naivety, no? I'm sorry don't kill me I have to run. It's quarter past. But see you again. Thanks very much. Because unfortunately I have to prepare.