Object a and the Function of Ideology
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2012 · 1:27:55 · 12,894 words
psychoanalysisideologyhegel-dialecticsecology-climaterace-antisemitismdemocracyeveryday-lifephilosophy-generalcapitalism
This seminar-style talk ranges across psychoanalysis, ecology, ideology, and politics. Žižek explains Lacan's distinction between the object of desire and the object-cause of desire (objet petit a), using love, antisemitism, and the shark in Jaws as illustrations of how the master signifier functions as an empty placeholder for inconsistent fears. He critiques lifestyle ecology (organic food, recycling) as ideological depoliticisation, and engages critically with Badiou's politics of subtraction, favouring instead a Hegelian willingness to seize state power. He also discusses national identity, desire mediated through the Other, and the structural logic of belief under cynical ideology.
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 “object of desire vs. object-cause of desire”
Žižek insists on Lacan's split: what you desire (the person/thing) is not the same as what causes your desire (the elusive x in them), and conflating the two misses how desire works.
as “objet petit a (object-cause of desire)”
The cause that makes you desire, distinct from the object you desire; usually a phantasmatic detail or je ne sais quoi rather than any positive property.
as “eternally past free act”
Schelling's concept as used by Žižek: love is a free act but one whose decision is radically unconscious and already-made; you discover you are in love, never choose to fall.
A demystifying look, a slight ironic smile that immediately disarms male self-display and reduces the subject to nakedness, which Žižek treats as a distinctively feminine power of subtraction.
as “subtraction (politics of)”
Žižek distinguishes two Badiouian senses: withdrawal into a liberated zone (which he criticises as politics of beautiful soul) versus reduction to a decisive point, a minimal yes/no that collapses the existing order like pulling the right card from a house of cards.
Žižek's pejorative for positions (Badiou's subtraction-as-withdrawal, Jameson's 'bombard with impossible demands') that avoid dirtying themselves with state power while remaining morally pure.
Badiou's concept, endorsed by Žižek, of the moment in a political situation when endless deliberation collapses into a binary yes/no decision that concentrates the whole situation.
as “there is no nature”
Žižek's ecological axiom: 'nature' as harmonious balance is a myth; real nature is chaotic, catastrophic, and improvisatory, with nowhere to return to.
as “lifestyle ecology / way-of-life ecology”
An ideological form that redirects ecological responsibility onto individual consumer acts (recycling, organic food), making people feel good while deflecting structural anti-capitalist critique.
as “je sais bien mais quand même (fetishist disavowal)”
The structure of cynical everyday belief: 'I know very well, but nonetheless I act as if…'; Žižek argues this is the dominant ideological form, not simple ignorance.
Under cynical ideology (Yugoslav self-management), subjects are required not merely to stop believing but to actively disbelieve official ideology; true belief becomes a threat to the system.
as “desire as desire of the Other”
Lacan's thesis that what we take as exotic or primitive desire (e.g. the Assassins' paradise, the Papua New Guinea dance) is really our own desire projected onto the Other.
Lacan's neologism for the consumerist technical objects that increasingly substitute for or supplement interpersonal enjoyment, discussed here as sex toys.
Lacan's late diagnosis that the Name-of-the-Father no longer provides the symbolic framework under which sexual relationships can be sustained; linked here to the proliferation of lathouse objects.
Žižek inverts the naïve reading: a patient who asked for 'a bed for two' was not expressing repressed desire for sex but was censoring himself from enjoying dinner too much, the slip reminded him of the real goal.
The small flaw or failure in the love-object that paradoxically triggers authentic love; the obstacle is not incidental but constitutive of desire, making it a version of object a.
Stanley Cavell's concept: authentic love requires a second marriage after discovering the beloved's weakness; Žižek uses this to illustrate that endearing foibles are constitutive of love.
Implicitly invoked via the logic of the master signifier: the Jew in Nazi ideology is an abstract placeholder that takes the place of real contradictions.
A term that functions not by having a fixed meaning but by giving apparent unity to an inconsistent set of fears or demands; the shark in Jaws condenses ecological, immigrant, and financial anxieties without reducing to any one of them.
An empty signifier that stands in for a whole inconsistent set of fears or meanings without having a content of its own; exemplified by 'the Jew' in Nazi ideology and the shark in Jaws.
An element that belongs to a set but has no proper place within it; Žižek (following Badiou and Rancière) argues this excluded element paradoxically stands for universality.
Stories he reaches for 4
A patient tells his analyst he said 'a bed for two please' instead of 'a table for two' at a restaurant with a date. The naïve Freudian reading is repressed desire for sex; Leader's reversal is that it was a superego reminder not to enjoy the meal and forget the real task.
“it was kind of a censorship reminder: this is just a foreplay, don't enjoy this too much, remember the real work happens later.”
The shark in Jaws stands not for any one thing (immigration, ecology, capital) but condenses all inconsistent social fears into one figure. This is how the master signifier functions, as an empty form that unifies disparate anxieties.
“it kind of magically stands in for all these fears. You as it were symbolically... it is for Lacan an empty signifier.”
Socialism is described as synthesising the greatest human achievements: primitive brutality from primitives, slavery from antiquity, domination from feudalism, exploitation from capitalism, and from socialism itself, only the name.
“From socialism it took the name.”
North Korea freshly paints only the south-facing side of a border city, dresses residents in better clothes, and obliges them to take evening walks, all performed for the South Korean gaze. Pure staging of identity for an external observer.
“They painted freshly all the houses, but only the southern side. They gave people better dresses... it's all how they were staged.”
Works invoked 13
Capital book
Referenced in the Yugoslav anecdote: the Secretary gave the wrong number of volumes and the wrong thesis, three volumes, not two; fourth thesis on Feuerbach cited.
Antigone play
Discussed as itself a radical rewriting of the original folk myth (which had a melodramatic happy-ish continuation); used to show that canonical 'authentic' texts are already transformations.
Melancholia film
Loved by Žižek despite initial scepticism about von Trier; introduced as the prompt for discussing melancholy and object a.
Jaws film
Described as 'boring' but used as the key illustration of the empty master signifier, the shark condenses inconsistent social fears without having content of its own.
Logics of Worlds book
Badiou's concept of le point (reduction to binary decision) from this book is endorsed by Žižek as the best version of subtraction.
Žižek met the filmmakers; admired for the director's defence of adapting the Inuit myth, used to argue that authentic tradition is always reinterpretation.
Named as Žižek's favourite Spielberg film.
Žižek says he 'really hates' this film, though acknowledges it may be more ambiguous than a simple celebration of communal liberation.
Cited approvingly as a Hollywood film that takes on the tobacco industry; mentioned in the context of being 'all for' exposing smoking's harms.
Called Rancière's best book; central argument (the third estate claims universality not inclusion) is used to illustrate the political power of the sur-numerary element.
The Borges taxonomy of dogs at the book's opening is cited to illustrate the concept of negative container / heterogeneous set.
Admired; Sacks's practice of seeing a psychoanalyst despite being a brain scientist is used to illustrate fetishist disavowal in intellectual life.
Praised; used to support the thesis that evolution is chaotic and non-progressive, specifically via the Burgess Shale fossils showing alternative trajectories of life.
People invoked 31
Described as a good friend and deconstructionist who dismisses Freudian theory yet takes pills and in practice enacts the opposite of her theoretical position, illustrating fetishist disavowal.
Mentioned as having liked Jaws and interpreted the shark as representing capitalist exploitation, used to illustrate multiple ideological readings of the same signifier.
Mentioned in passing as an example of trans identity (referred to as 'Larry Wachowski or what') when discussing an interlocutor's husband.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
Mentioned approvingly by an interlocutor as describing a similar mechanism to staged authenticity via René Girard's mimetic desire.
Alenka Zupančič positive
Described as a Slovenian friend and chain smoker; appears in the Ken Reinhard anecdote.
Referenced as the source of Dupuy's mimetic framework, with the question of how Žižek's account of desire-of-the-Other differs from Girardian small-Other mimicry.
Thor Heyerdahl positive
His Kon-Tiki voyage and the Egyptian-style raft that fell apart (when a structural rope was omitted) serves as an illustration of the opacity of natural and cultural systems.
Mentioned ambivalently: Žižek loves Melancholia but 'really hates' Idiots (Idioterne); he is sceptical about von Trier's celebration of group liberation.
Jacques Lacan positive
Central theoretical authority throughout; Žižek draws on Lacan's distinction between object of desire and object-cause of desire, the concept of lathouse, the Name-of-the-Father, Seminar XI, and the formula 'desire is desire of the Other'.
Henry James positive
Praised as a master of depicting the experience of being already in love before one knows it, illustrating the unconscious, past structure of the love-decision.
Stephen Jay Gould positive
Praised as a 'genius' and great progressive Darwinian; his Wonderful Life (on the Burgess Shale) is used to support the thesis that nature is non-progressive and chaotic.
Mentioned as a recurring critic who accuses Žižek of male chauvinism and binary logic; Žižek recounts provoking her by extending the list of possible desire-objects to forestall such charges.
Woody Allen positive
Cited for a quip (in a late film) about the shift from 'does she love me?' to 'is the test positive?' as the central erotic question, illustrating medicalisation of desire.
Álvaro García Linera positive
Bolivia's vice-president and theoretician; Žižek met him and found him reasonable and without illusions, willing to acknowledge limits of the Bolivian project even if he cannot say so publicly.
Oliver Sacks positive
Praised for The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat; noted as a brain scientist who nonetheless goes to a psychoanalyst, illustrating fetishist disavowal in intellectual life.
Engaged critically but respectfully: Žižek endorses Badiou's concept of le point and the sur-numerary element, but rejects his politics of subtraction-as-withdrawal as too close to 'beautiful soul' politics; they debate these issues directly.
George Orwell positive
Cited for a text on British upper-class nationalism, showing that cynical self-mockery is constitutive of, not opposed to, patriotic identity.
Fredric Jameson negative
Described as a friend with whom Žižek had a conflict: Jameson holds that the left can only bombard those in power with impossible social-democratic demands, which Žižek finds 'a way too easy solution'.
Appears in the Soviet Gagarin joke as the cynical ideological leader who knows the truth and suppresses it.
António Damásio negative
Criticised for trying to appear refined by narrating personal anecdotes in scientific writing ('yesterday I had a famous Portuguese piano player'), Žižek finds the style pretentious.
Mladen Dolar positive
Described as a Slovenian friend and chain smoker; appears in the anecdote about Ken Reinhard's smoking prohibition.
Evo Morales negative
Žižek attacked Morales's letter on ecology invoking Mother Earth mythology, calling it the greatest obstacle to serious ecology; Morales refused to receive Žižek as a result.
Michel Foucault positive
The opening of Les Mots et les choses citing Borges's taxonomy of dogs is used to illustrate the concept of a 'negative container' element within a set.
Jacques Rancière positive
His La Mésentente (Disagreement) is praised as his best book; Žižek uses Rancière's claim that democracy begins when the excluded third estate claims to speak for universality.
Subcomandante Marcos negative
Referred to mockingly as 'Subcomediante Marcos' by Žižek's radical friends; his embrace by mainstream politicians is taken as evidence that the Zapatista strategy of moral authority has been depoliticised.
Darian Leader positive
Praised as a 'nice British Lacanian intelligent guy'; his clinical reversal of the 'bed for two' Freudian slip is used as a key illustration of how object a works.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling positive
Cited for the concept of love as an 'eternally past free act', the unconscious, already-made decision that is discovered rather than chosen.
Stanley Cavell positive
His work on comedies of remarriage is invoked to show that authentic love requires a second choice after discovering the beloved's weakness.
Steven Spielberg positive
Jaws is used to illustrate the empty master signifier; Spielberg's Empire of the Sun is mentioned as Žižek's favourite Spielberg film.
Karl Marx positive
His mode-of-production schema is discussed critically: the 'Asiatic mode of production' is exposed as a catch-all negative container for everything that doesn't fit the other categories.
Jorge Luis Borges positive
His fictional Chinese encyclopedia taxonomy of dogs (including 'all dogs not included in this list') is cited as the model for how Marxist Asiatic mode of production functions as a negative container.
What it argues
object a as cause versus object of desiremaster signifier as empty placeholder for inconsistent fearslifestyle ecology as ideological depoliticisationcynical belief and fetishist disavowal in everyday lifepolitics of subtraction versus seizing state powerdesire as desire of the Other / national identity as stagedantisemitism as structural logic, not empirical claim
Dialectical moves 10
“The true question about antisemitism is not 'are Jews really like that?' but why Nazi ideology needed the figure of the Jew to sustain itself — the moment you accept the empirical debate, you've already lost.”
Refusal of empirical rebuttal in favour of structural analysis: ideology is not a mistake about reality but a necessary fantasy.
“A jealous husband's jealousy is pathological even if his suspicions are completely true — what makes it pathological is not its truth-value but its structural role in maintaining his identity.”
Truth of a belief is irrelevant to its ideological function; the pathology lies in the structure, not the content.
“The more the Nazis killed the Jews, the more threatening the remainder became — not in reality but in the logic of the master signifier.”
Destroying the object of ideological fantasy intensifies rather than resolves the fantasy.
“The bed-for-two slip was not a repressed wish for sex but a censorship reminding him not to enjoy dinner so much he forgets the real goal — the Freudian reading is the exact opposite of the naive one.”
Reversal of the standard Freudian slip interpretation: the slip came from superego censorship, not id desire.
“Under cynical ideology you don't just fail to believe — you have to actively not believe; genuine belief becomes a dissident threat.”
Official ideology sustains itself not through sincere belief but through enforced disbelief, a paradox of ideological reproduction.
“The exotic dance performed by Papua New Guineans for Western anthropologists was not their own authentic ritual but was invented overnight to please the guests — what the Westerners 'discovered' was literally their own desire.”
The Other's desire is always already the subject's own desire reflected back.
“The most non-traditional thing for Inuit storytellers is the European obsession with the 'authentic original version' — their tradition is precisely constant retelling and adaptation.”
What appears as corruption of tradition (changing stories) is in fact the tradition; the myth of authenticity is the European imposition.
“From primitive society socialism took primitive brutality, from slavery it took slavery, from feudalism brutal domination, from capitalism exploitation — and from socialism it took the name.”
Socialism is an empty master signifier: it borrows all its predicates from prior forms and contributes only its own name.
“The sub-numerary element that has no proper place within the set paradoxically stands for universality — those excluded claim to speak for all.”
Exclusion from the order of representation is the condition of possibility for making a universal claim.
“What you think is just an obstacle or instrument (her father, the restaurant dinner) starts to be enjoyed so much that you forget the supposed 'real thing' — the means becomes the end.”
Object a seduces via detour: the supplement or instrument displaces and becomes the real source of enjoyment.
Claims 15
asserts
The object of desire and the object-cause of desire are not the same: what you desire (the person) differs from what makes you desire (an elusive phantasmatic detail).Lacanian theory of desire
asserts
Lifestyle ecology (recycling, organic food) functions ideologically by making individuals feel responsible and morally satisfied while deflecting systemic anti-capitalist critique.ecology and ideology
asserts
There is no nature in the sense of a harmonious balanced order; radical ecology must start from the axiom that nature itself is catastrophic, improvisatory, and without stable equilibrium.ecology / Mother Earth mythology
rejects
Badiou's politics of subtraction-as-withdrawal into liberated zones risks becoming tolerated by intelligent regimes and degenerates into moralistic posturing.Badiou's politics of subtraction
asserts
The left should be willing to seize state power even knowing it may fail, using the state against itself, rather than bombarding power with impossible demands from a safe distance.revolutionary strategy / state power
asserts
The antisemitic figure of the Jew is an empty master signifier that stands in for all inconsistent fears rather than reflecting any empirical reality about Jewish people.antisemitism and ideology
reframes
Debating antisemitism at the level of 'are Jews really like that?' concedes the ideological game; the correct question is why Nazi ideology needed the figure of the Jew to sustain its identity.critique of antisemitism
asserts
Jealousy remains pathological even when the suspicion is true, because what matters is the structural role jealousy plays in the subject's identity, not its factual accuracy.psychoanalysis / jealousy / object a
asserts
What we perceive as authentic exotic or indigenous desire is typically our own desire projected onto the Other, not something discovered.desire of the Other / ethnographic projection
asserts
Under cynical ideology, subjects are required to actively non-believe the official ideology; genuine belief in the official line is treated as more threatening than disbelief.cynical ideology / Yugoslav communism
asserts
The sur-numerary element — what is excluded from a set but counted within it — paradoxically stands for universality; this is what Rancière shows about democracy and the third estate.political ontology / Badiou / Rancière
reframes
National and folkloric identities are always already staged for an external gaze; there is nothing less authentic about this, as the Inuit filmmakers' approach demonstrates.national identity / authenticity
reframes
True subtraction in the Badiouian sense is not withdrawal but reduction to a minimal decisive point — like pulling the right card so the whole house of cards collapses.Badiou's concept of subtraction
asserts
Our consumerist societies are not truly permissive; they allow pleasure only in a 'moderate healthy form' (Diet Coke, decaffeinated coffee) — genuine excess is increasingly prohibited.consumerism and ideology
asserts
Love as a free act is nonetheless an 'eternally past' free act: the decision to love is made unconsciously, discovered rather than chosen.love / freedom / Schelling
Quotes 17
“Object of desire is what you desire, but the cause of desire is that which makes you desire. It's not the same.”Slavoj Žižek · object of desire vs. object-cause of desire
“You know that you never, when somebody asks you why do you love that girl or that boy — the moment you can answer to this question, it's not true love.”Slavoj Žižek · love and object a
“Love is a free act. But it's more ambiguous — as Schelling would have put it, an eternally past free act. You discover you are in love. But the decision is radically unconscious.”Slavoj Žižek · love as eternally past free act / Schelling
“The first rule of really radical ecology is: there is no nature. Not in the stupid sense of subjective idealism, but there is no nature in the sense of natural harmonious balance.”Slavoj Žižek · there is no nature / radical ecology
“Recycling is so much propagated to make it easy for you. It makes guilty each of us so you don't ask the big questions.”Slavoj Žižek · recycling as ideological depoliticisation
“je sais bien mais quand même — I know very well but… is crucial in everyday ideology. I don't think people are stupid.”Slavoj Žižek · fetishist disavowal / cynical belief
“It's not only that those in power didn't believe in their own ideology. You have to not believe. Like it's a tragic story: you had to actively non-believe.”Slavoj Žižek · active non-belief under cynical ideology
“I know this but that was my point, I don't care. Was it beautiful, I mean. That's how ideology functions.”Slavoj Žižek · cynical ideology / performative non-belief
“If you say Jews are dirty, corrupted — you are not yet a true antisemite. To be a true antisemite you have to say they are corrupted because they are Jews. And then you ask what is this? — some mysterious x.”Slavoj Žižek · antisemitism and object a
“The moment you accept debate at the level of reality — 'are Jews really like that?' — you've lost. You've sold your soul to the devil.”Slavoj Žižek · structural vs. empirical critique of antisemitism
“Even if his wife is sleeping around all the time, his jealousy is still pathological. What makes it pathological is not is it true or not, but the structural role it plays.”Slavoj Žižek · pathology as structural, not empirical
“The more the Nazis killed the Jews, the more threatening that remainder was. Not real. But what I want to say is another thing that Lacan showed me the way.”Slavoj Žižek · master signifier / fantasy logic of antisemitism
“The most non-traditional thing for them is this European obsession with the authentic version.”Slavoj Žižek · authenticity as European imposition on indigenous tradition
“True subtraction for me: when you pull out the right card, they all fall down. Not just establishing a free space outside.”Slavoj Žižek · subtraction as decisive collapse vs. withdrawal
“When the third estate says: we stand for universality — it's not liberal inclusion, it's a much more arrogant position. Precisely those excluded claim to speak for all.”Slavoj Žižek · sur-numerary element / universality from exclusion
“You cannot order to love. But even if you are in a position of not knowing you're in love — a woman can see it, wait for a week and so on.”Slavoj Žižek · unconscious structure of love / feminine intuition
“Like you remember Michel Foucault quotes at the beginning of Les Mots et les choses that famous Borges' qualification of dogs — all the dogs which are not included in this list. It's a kind of a negative container.”Slavoj Žižek · negative container / heterogeneous set / Foucault / Borges
Transcript 52 turns
unknown
Okay, now nonetheless, to be
Okay, now nonetheless, to be
Slavoj Žižek
a little bit of theory but more general, let’s go on because many interesting things can be said about object a, precisely we were ending at that status. Uh, because some of you also asked me to do a little bit of melancholy, melancholia. Not, although I love the movie, not, of course, Lars von Trier, Melancholia, although again, I was first skeptical because I don’t always like Lars von Trier. For example, let me be frank, the movie, maybe we disagree, that I really hate is Idiots. Although it’s ambiguous, maybe, I mean you saw Idiots. What is your reading? Does he celebrate this, you know, let’s establish a group which lives freely, or it’s more ambiguous? I think it can be read that it’s more ambiguous than that. Although you remember there is a poor ordinary girl there who is broken... Okay, but what I want to say is that it’s not, okay, Melancholia and so on. The crucial distinction here, and this is what some of you asked me already, I want to explain it, is the distinction between object of desire and what Lacan calls object a, which is the object-cause of desire. Now you will say, what’s the bullshit? I like a girl, or Judith Butler was once mad at me because she always attacks me for being male chauvinist and caught in binary logic, no? And then once when I explained this to her, I had a talk where she was, I went on and said let’s say my object is a girl, or a boy, or a dog, or a cow, or two boys like I told her, just so that she will not accuse me of speciesism or binary logic or
a little bit of theory but more general, let’s go on because many interesting things can be said about object a, precisely we were ending at that status. Uh, because some of you also asked me to do a little bit of melancholy, melancholia. Not, although I love the movie, not, of course, Lars von Trier, Melancholia, although again, I was first skeptical because I don’t always like Lars von Trier. For example, let me be frank, the movie, maybe we disagree, that I really hate is Idiots. Although it’s ambiguous, maybe, I mean you saw Idiots. What is your reading? Does he celebrate this, you know, let’s establish a group which lives freely, or it’s more ambiguous? I think it can be read that it’s more ambiguous than that. Although you remember there is a poor ordinary girl there who is broken... Okay, but what I want to say is that it’s not, okay, Melancholia and so on. The crucial distinction here, and this is what some of you asked me already, I want to explain it, is the distinction between object of desire and what Lacan calls object a, which is the object-cause of desire. Now you will say, what’s the bullshit? I like a girl, or Judith Butler was once mad at me because she always attacks me for being male chauvinist and caught in binary logic, no? And then once when I explained this to her, I had a talk where she was, I went on and said let’s say my object is a girl, or a boy, or a dog, or a cow, or two boys like I told her, just so that she will not accuse me of speciesism or binary logic or
unknown
whatever. Okay,
whatever. Okay,
Slavoj Žižek
so seriously. You will say, wait a minute, sorry from my male chauvinist perspective, if I love, am attracted to a girl, it’s obviously she is the cause of my desire. Of course, no. Lacan’s point is: object of desire is what you desire, but the cause of desire is that which makes you desire. It’s not the same. Usually it’s some phantasmatic detail. You know how this works in love. You know, love—and this is, and it’s very complicated because okay, let’s go through this standard stuff. You know that you never, when somebody asks you why do you love that girl or that boy or whatever? You know that the moment you can answer to this question, it’s not true love. Because it’s already what Badiou would have called positive order of being, properties. Like love—and this makes another nice paradox about which Schelling wrote a lot—love is a free act. In the sense of, my God, you freely choose whom to love. You know, you cannot be ordered to love. But it’s more ambiguous, because at the same time it’s a free act, but an as Schelling would have put it, an eternally past free act. You know what I mean? Phenomenologically all of a sudden you discover you are in love. But the decision is radically unconscious. You are never in a position to say I want to fall in love and sorry to be vulgar, don’t take it personally, like I see three or four more women here and then, you know, I make a list. That one has nice breasts but not nice legs, that one blah-blah and then I make a kind of accountancy, you know. Oh, she has five good points, only one bad point, so that’s the one. Of course, the moment you do this, it’s not love. But the point—so what is so wonderful and among other writers, imagine even if I am a primitive guy I like him, he is refined—Henry James. He is a master of describing these situations where you are already in love but you don’t yet know it, you know. And this is another thing that, I’m sorry, it’s as if I’m trying now to praise women in this hypocritical typically male chauvinist way. If you’re a serious feminist you must know it that the moment a man praises some specific feminist intuition or whatever, that guy is for sure male chauvinist, you know. But nonetheless, what I’m saying is that I often noticed through personal interactions that women are much better at discerning this, like I was once with a friend, and a friend of mine, I didn't even know, he didn't know, and a woman—not sexual, just friend—was there and said you already love that girl. The guy laughed, said no, no I don't, and she said you just don't know it, wait for a week, and so on, you know. Another thing, and this would be what Badiou calls subtraction, a nice example. I'm referring to our personal experience here, don’t be afraid, nothing sexual and so on, but like... there is a specific, I’ve written about this, feminine gaze. Imagine you talk to your wife or to a girlfriend, group of people, and you are, if you are a man, in this usual male chauvinist boasting, you know. You try to fascinate people, you talk. And of course, men can also be aggressively sarcastic and so on. But correct me from your experience if I am wrong. In my experience only a woman can do something which is so terrifying. She just looks at you and that look is like what are you bullshitting, you know like? Just a look with slight ironic smile and you are naked, you are disarmed. I haven't met a man who can do this. Do you know them?
so seriously. You will say, wait a minute, sorry from my male chauvinist perspective, if I love, am attracted to a girl, it’s obviously she is the cause of my desire. Of course, no. Lacan’s point is: object of desire is what you desire, but the cause of desire is that which makes you desire. It’s not the same. Usually it’s some phantasmatic detail. You know how this works in love. You know, love—and this is, and it’s very complicated because okay, let’s go through this standard stuff. You know that you never, when somebody asks you why do you love that girl or that boy or whatever? You know that the moment you can answer to this question, it’s not true love. Because it’s already what Badiou would have called positive order of being, properties. Like love—and this makes another nice paradox about which Schelling wrote a lot—love is a free act. In the sense of, my God, you freely choose whom to love. You know, you cannot be ordered to love. But it’s more ambiguous, because at the same time it’s a free act, but an as Schelling would have put it, an eternally past free act. You know what I mean? Phenomenologically all of a sudden you discover you are in love. But the decision is radically unconscious. You are never in a position to say I want to fall in love and sorry to be vulgar, don’t take it personally, like I see three or four more women here and then, you know, I make a list. That one has nice breasts but not nice legs, that one blah-blah and then I make a kind of accountancy, you know. Oh, she has five good points, only one bad point, so that’s the one. Of course, the moment you do this, it’s not love. But the point—so what is so wonderful and among other writers, imagine even if I am a primitive guy I like him, he is refined—Henry James. He is a master of describing these situations where you are already in love but you don’t yet know it, you know. And this is another thing that, I’m sorry, it’s as if I’m trying now to praise women in this hypocritical typically male chauvinist way. If you’re a serious feminist you must know it that the moment a man praises some specific feminist intuition or whatever, that guy is for sure male chauvinist, you know. But nonetheless, what I’m saying is that I often noticed through personal interactions that women are much better at discerning this, like I was once with a friend, and a friend of mine, I didn't even know, he didn't know, and a woman—not sexual, just friend—was there and said you already love that girl. The guy laughed, said no, no I don't, and she said you just don't know it, wait for a week, and so on, you know. Another thing, and this would be what Badiou calls subtraction, a nice example. I'm referring to our personal experience here, don’t be afraid, nothing sexual and so on, but like... there is a specific, I’ve written about this, feminine gaze. Imagine you talk to your wife or to a girlfriend, group of people, and you are, if you are a man, in this usual male chauvinist boasting, you know. You try to fascinate people, you talk. And of course, men can also be aggressively sarcastic and so on. But correct me from your experience if I am wrong. In my experience only a woman can do something which is so terrifying. She just looks at you and that look is like what are you bullshitting, you know like? Just a look with slight ironic smile and you are naked, you are disarmed. I haven't met a man who can do this. Do you know them?
unknown
I have, yeah. A man? Yeah, my husband. And I can't... he has great intuition.
I have, yeah. A man? Yeah, my husband. And I can't... he has great intuition.
Slavoj Žižek
Really? Really? And he is not like the opposite of Larry, Larry, of Larry Wachowski or what? You know that? Sorry?
Really? Really? And he is not like the opposite of Larry, Larry, of Larry Wachowski or what? You know that? Sorry?
unknown
He's not aware of himself but he knows, it comes
He's not aware of himself but he knows, it comes
Slavoj Žižek
out. And he is not a transsexual that... he is a man? He's a man. Sorry? He sees the whole effect. Really? He really can do this? Yeah? Like, but not, this is already male, this cynical
out. And he is not a transsexual that... he is a man? He's a man. Sorry? He sees the whole effect. Really? He really can do this? Yeah? Like, but not, this is already male, this cynical
unknown
sarcasm, none of that. Just this one gaze, you know like
sarcasm, none of that. Just this one gaze, you know like
Slavoj Žižek
and as it were he sees through you, you know. You are naked. Part of my brain that he's not aware of sees through me. Ah, then at least pray to God that this will remain just a part, not spread to, to all the brain. No but really, maybe, ah yeah, we were talking about this yesterday, this can also interest you, it’s linked to this subtraction, you know. I see, I wonder if you meant the same, to make it more actual. You know, Alain Badiou, after getting burnt with Maoism and so on, now advocates subtraction as a political
and as it were he sees through you, you know. You are naked. Part of my brain that he's not aware of sees through me. Ah, then at least pray to God that this will remain just a part, not spread to, to all the brain. No but really, maybe, ah yeah, we were talking about this yesterday, this can also interest you, it’s linked to this subtraction, you know. I see, I wonder if you meant the same, to make it more actual. You know, Alain Badiou, after getting burnt with Maoism and so on, now advocates subtraction as a political
unknown
category also. And I agree generally with him, but I have some minor problems, but he also has,
category also. And I agree generally with him, but I have some minor problems, but he also has,
Slavoj Žižek
namely his idea very simply is the following one. Today there is no chance to really do a revolution and so on, we are for some time within capitalist liberal state order. But he accepts, Badiou, as many others, and I don’t accept it, I’m a Hegelian here, this old Marxist premise that authentic politics has to happen at a distance towards state. No? That state is representation, state is, well, non-evental by definition and so on. So then the problem I get, first I have a problem generally, it’s for me too close to the politics of beautiful soul, of clean hands. Like if you adopt this position, what then do you do in politics? Here I am a brutal Hegelian, you protest, you demand. But you don’t want to dirty your hands. I find this a too easy hypocritical position. Where, you know this, if you read politics of subtraction in this way. We don’t want to take power, we just want to bombard those in power with impossible demands and so on and so on. And although they are totally different theoretically, here I also had a conflict with Fred Jameson, who without this Badiou's precise terminology has the same attitude. He told me all the left can do today is bombard those in power with impossible social-democratic demands, like universal healthcare, blah blah. Of course they cannot do it, but, you know, to slowly educate the people that welfare state cannot deliver and so on and so on. But I told him but this appears to me a way too easy solution. And you know where the conflict emerged, not between me and Badiou, but some of his followers. Some of them even attacked me in Greece, you know, when SYRIZA was close to power. There was a whole strand which said no, no, no, don't do it, we are playing the game of those in power. I was much more tragically, heroically oriented. I said fuck it, even if you know you will fail, risk it, do it, grab power. I mean, if the state is here to stay, why not if you can grab power and you know, you can do things, you can up to a point use the state against itself. I’m not talking here about, I have great problems with Chávez, you know. But for example, they are much more sympathetic to me. I met him, him, not Evo Morales but Linera, the theoretician, no? And he was quite reasonable when I talked to him. He has no illusions, even privately, he will not tell this publicly, he has no illusions about Cuba and so on, no? But he told me My God, we have a chance, we know there are limits, but even if you fail you can do... You know, I don't, I dislike this position of bombarding some other with impossible demands, knowing well that the other cannot meet them. Okay, this is good, but still—I know you're just skeptical, it's not a big, big theoretical counter, you know. So what I’m saying is that, okay, back to Badiou subtraction. You... ah maybe if you are from Mexico you know it, am I right or not? What is happening now with Zapatista? Because my problem is that they were a pure model, even Badiou referred to them, of politics of subtraction. You just withdraw from state, you establish there a free territory, which incidentally, and I love Zapatista for this, friends who have links with them and who were there told me, I love this pragmatic spirit, you know? They have their region there, and you have all this leftist, upper leftist class tourism, no? Leftists come there to show solidarity and to have a good time. There is a problem: in their region, Zapatista, no alcohol, no sex, no prostitution. But fuck it, then you lose progressive tourists, no? So they told me, you sit there, but left Zapatistas organized a bus service to the nearest city in normal Mexico where you get prostitution and so on, all that. I like it. But what I want to say is that here I’m asking you if you know was it really like that. It was nice, but at a certain point when that Subcomandante Marcos assumed that role of just, you know, we just want to be the voice of truth, blah blah, this kind of a moral authority, basically didn’t they become more or less acceptable? You know like, politicians almost started to like them. Yeah, we need someone to tell us the truth, and so on. No wonder some of my more radical friends now refer to Subcomandante Marcos, I love this evil, as Subcomediante Marcos, you know like. Everybody loves him now, you know, great guy who tells the truth and so on. But you know something like... there is... okay, I’ll put it like this. This is—I know that with Alain Badiou that this subtraction in this sense is not subtraction at its most radical. The metaphor that I used and he loved it once when we debated this of subtraction is: you know when you have this—how do you call it?—when you put cards and you do this fragile house, house of cards. You know then the trick is if you pull out, if you subtract the right card, they all fall down, you know. This would be for me the true radical subtraction. Not just as Badiou unfortunately sometimes sounds as we have to establish our own free space, liberated zone outside. Well, you play a very dangerous game here because an intelligent regime not only allows but even supports such free zones. They are the... you know, for me, you know where Badiou is much closer to authentic subtraction? When he understands subtraction as reduction to a minimal difference as it were, no? Subtraction is you almost... subtraction is as he put it once nicely, subtraction is something like... what he calls in his Logics of Worlds and this theory is nice, le point, the point. You know, for example, we are in a tense political situation and we can bullshit up and down at the level of reasons, you know: shall we do this, maybe, maybe not, blah blah blah. But then at a certain point, and the art of authentic politics for me is to identify that point. At a certain point you are cornered. And you have to say okay, okay we can endlessly debate do this or not, but you have to decide, a simple yes or no. And this is for me a much better example of subtraction. Subtraction in the sense of as Badiou puts it reduction to the point. Like if you are in a proto-revolutionary situation: Okay, cut the bullshit, do we take power or not? Do we risk it or not? With the Zapatistas, they fell into a... I mean they appealed to the indigenous cosmovision which is a subtraction in itself in a way because it's like a... Yeah, but here I have a big problem because I know Morales is doing the same, no? And this is why then after I gave a talk there I know everything from Linera, Morales Evo didn't want to receive me. You know why? Because I couldn't resist attacking him, you know about two years ago Evo Morales published a letter to world leaders, you know, about ecology, no? Claiming that it’s horror, capitalism ruined, killed Mother Earth. You can imagine what was my comment. At least one good thing that capitalism did. No, and very seriously. No, no, no, this is if you want to follow this in some of my books, I really think that this Mother Earth mythology is the greatest obstacle to do serious ecology. Because the situation is much more tragic. Uh, the first thing to do, and we have to take this lesson from really good radical Darwinian biologists and so on. You know, we have totally to, totally to abandon I think this maternal approach of human hubris, you know: Earth is a Gaia living mother in balance and we through our human hubris we raped Mother Earth, too much exploitation, now we have to pay the price and so on and so on. I think that the first lesson to take is that there is no Mother Earth. This is why I like this formula for which I was of course attacked, that the first rule of really radical ecology is: there is no nature. Not in the stupid sense of some stupid subjective idealism, you know, there is no reality, we are just dreaming, but there is no nature in the sense in which we understand nature as some kind of a natural harmonious balance and so on, no? Uh, you know this is why it’s so nice to read, he was really great, you know that great progressive Darwinian (privately he was a leftist, he was really a genius) Stephen Jay Gould. His It’s a Wonderful Life—no, it's not the movie, it's a title of course based off his best book—where he shows the... it’s about how is it called, Burgess Shale or what, some fossil big rock in which it is frozen a certain point of oscillation in evolution where we learn it might have taken a totally different orientation where I don’t know fishes would become intelligent, totally different and so on. And his point is this: there is no progress in nature, nature is totally chaotic and improvises with catastrophes all the time. And again, I repeat this all the time, to cure you of the dreams of Mother Nature, think about
namely his idea very simply is the following one. Today there is no chance to really do a revolution and so on, we are for some time within capitalist liberal state order. But he accepts, Badiou, as many others, and I don’t accept it, I’m a Hegelian here, this old Marxist premise that authentic politics has to happen at a distance towards state. No? That state is representation, state is, well, non-evental by definition and so on. So then the problem I get, first I have a problem generally, it’s for me too close to the politics of beautiful soul, of clean hands. Like if you adopt this position, what then do you do in politics? Here I am a brutal Hegelian, you protest, you demand. But you don’t want to dirty your hands. I find this a too easy hypocritical position. Where, you know this, if you read politics of subtraction in this way. We don’t want to take power, we just want to bombard those in power with impossible demands and so on and so on. And although they are totally different theoretically, here I also had a conflict with Fred Jameson, who without this Badiou's precise terminology has the same attitude. He told me all the left can do today is bombard those in power with impossible social-democratic demands, like universal healthcare, blah blah. Of course they cannot do it, but, you know, to slowly educate the people that welfare state cannot deliver and so on and so on. But I told him but this appears to me a way too easy solution. And you know where the conflict emerged, not between me and Badiou, but some of his followers. Some of them even attacked me in Greece, you know, when SYRIZA was close to power. There was a whole strand which said no, no, no, don't do it, we are playing the game of those in power. I was much more tragically, heroically oriented. I said fuck it, even if you know you will fail, risk it, do it, grab power. I mean, if the state is here to stay, why not if you can grab power and you know, you can do things, you can up to a point use the state against itself. I’m not talking here about, I have great problems with Chávez, you know. But for example, they are much more sympathetic to me. I met him, him, not Evo Morales but Linera, the theoretician, no? And he was quite reasonable when I talked to him. He has no illusions, even privately, he will not tell this publicly, he has no illusions about Cuba and so on, no? But he told me My God, we have a chance, we know there are limits, but even if you fail you can do... You know, I don't, I dislike this position of bombarding some other with impossible demands, knowing well that the other cannot meet them. Okay, this is good, but still—I know you're just skeptical, it's not a big, big theoretical counter, you know. So what I’m saying is that, okay, back to Badiou subtraction. You... ah maybe if you are from Mexico you know it, am I right or not? What is happening now with Zapatista? Because my problem is that they were a pure model, even Badiou referred to them, of politics of subtraction. You just withdraw from state, you establish there a free territory, which incidentally, and I love Zapatista for this, friends who have links with them and who were there told me, I love this pragmatic spirit, you know? They have their region there, and you have all this leftist, upper leftist class tourism, no? Leftists come there to show solidarity and to have a good time. There is a problem: in their region, Zapatista, no alcohol, no sex, no prostitution. But fuck it, then you lose progressive tourists, no? So they told me, you sit there, but left Zapatistas organized a bus service to the nearest city in normal Mexico where you get prostitution and so on, all that. I like it. But what I want to say is that here I’m asking you if you know was it really like that. It was nice, but at a certain point when that Subcomandante Marcos assumed that role of just, you know, we just want to be the voice of truth, blah blah, this kind of a moral authority, basically didn’t they become more or less acceptable? You know like, politicians almost started to like them. Yeah, we need someone to tell us the truth, and so on. No wonder some of my more radical friends now refer to Subcomandante Marcos, I love this evil, as Subcomediante Marcos, you know like. Everybody loves him now, you know, great guy who tells the truth and so on. But you know something like... there is... okay, I’ll put it like this. This is—I know that with Alain Badiou that this subtraction in this sense is not subtraction at its most radical. The metaphor that I used and he loved it once when we debated this of subtraction is: you know when you have this—how do you call it?—when you put cards and you do this fragile house, house of cards. You know then the trick is if you pull out, if you subtract the right card, they all fall down, you know. This would be for me the true radical subtraction. Not just as Badiou unfortunately sometimes sounds as we have to establish our own free space, liberated zone outside. Well, you play a very dangerous game here because an intelligent regime not only allows but even supports such free zones. They are the... you know, for me, you know where Badiou is much closer to authentic subtraction? When he understands subtraction as reduction to a minimal difference as it were, no? Subtraction is you almost... subtraction is as he put it once nicely, subtraction is something like... what he calls in his Logics of Worlds and this theory is nice, le point, the point. You know, for example, we are in a tense political situation and we can bullshit up and down at the level of reasons, you know: shall we do this, maybe, maybe not, blah blah blah. But then at a certain point, and the art of authentic politics for me is to identify that point. At a certain point you are cornered. And you have to say okay, okay we can endlessly debate do this or not, but you have to decide, a simple yes or no. And this is for me a much better example of subtraction. Subtraction in the sense of as Badiou puts it reduction to the point. Like if you are in a proto-revolutionary situation: Okay, cut the bullshit, do we take power or not? Do we risk it or not? With the Zapatistas, they fell into a... I mean they appealed to the indigenous cosmovision which is a subtraction in itself in a way because it's like a... Yeah, but here I have a big problem because I know Morales is doing the same, no? And this is why then after I gave a talk there I know everything from Linera, Morales Evo didn't want to receive me. You know why? Because I couldn't resist attacking him, you know about two years ago Evo Morales published a letter to world leaders, you know, about ecology, no? Claiming that it’s horror, capitalism ruined, killed Mother Earth. You can imagine what was my comment. At least one good thing that capitalism did. No, and very seriously. No, no, no, this is if you want to follow this in some of my books, I really think that this Mother Earth mythology is the greatest obstacle to do serious ecology. Because the situation is much more tragic. Uh, the first thing to do, and we have to take this lesson from really good radical Darwinian biologists and so on. You know, we have totally to, totally to abandon I think this maternal approach of human hubris, you know: Earth is a Gaia living mother in balance and we through our human hubris we raped Mother Earth, too much exploitation, now we have to pay the price and so on and so on. I think that the first lesson to take is that there is no Mother Earth. This is why I like this formula for which I was of course attacked, that the first rule of really radical ecology is: there is no nature. Not in the stupid sense of some stupid subjective idealism, you know, there is no reality, we are just dreaming, but there is no nature in the sense in which we understand nature as some kind of a natural harmonious balance and so on, no? Uh, you know this is why it’s so nice to read, he was really great, you know that great progressive Darwinian (privately he was a leftist, he was really a genius) Stephen Jay Gould. His It’s a Wonderful Life—no, it's not the movie, it's a title of course based off his best book—where he shows the... it’s about how is it called, Burgess Shale or what, some fossil big rock in which it is frozen a certain point of oscillation in evolution where we learn it might have taken a totally different orientation where I don’t know fishes would become intelligent, totally different and so on. And his point is this: there is no progress in nature, nature is totally chaotic and improvises with catastrophes all the time. And again, I repeat this all the time, to cure you of the dreams of Mother Nature, think about
unknown
oil. We live off oil reserves. Are we even aware what kind of mega-ecological catastrophes had to happen in prehistory, before we were here to screw it up with our subjectivity, for us to have oil reserves? That’s nature. Nature is already
oil. We live off oil reserves. Are we even aware what kind of mega-ecological catastrophes had to happen in prehistory, before we were here to screw it up with our subjectivity, for us to have oil reserves? That’s nature. Nature is already
Slavoj Žižek
artificial. Nature is not an order, nature is not balanced order that we then humans through our hubris ruined or whatever. And this does not mean okay it’s already chaos we don’t have to worry. No, the situation is even worse. Of course we can measure and we should how with our exploitation we can ruin it, global warming blah blah, but we should always be aware that we have nowhere to return. You know what I mean? There is no natural balance Mother Earth whatever where we can return. This is why as I... in my maybe you know the line of talk, in my regular attacks on this kind of Mother Earth ecology, I especially like to attack as pure case of ideology the so-called mode of life or how do they call it, way of life ecology. Which, you know, this kind of a false personification. You know, did you recycle the Coke can? Did you put newspaper... Of course I’m doing it, it’s good to do it, but let’s be serious. This is not the solution. This is a clear case of everyday life ideology. They make you do this so that you feel good. You know it’s even, you must know it but I like to repeat it so nasty because it happened four or five times that somebody started to cry you are ruining my life attacked me when I took this example: organic farming. Okay, it’s good, but do you really believe in it? Maybe, maybe not. I have always this paranoiac suspicion that you know in the store you have these beautiful genetically modified apples which are horror. You know, they change the genes so that they don’t rot. And I discovered this horror once, I went on a trip from my home and I forgot there three of these genetically modified perfect apples. It was summer, hot. I returned three weeks later, the apples were still absolutely... you know, in heat, can you imagine? Okay, but then... You don't trust organic? Sorry? Does that mean you don't trust organic food? Uh, no, my cynicism is this one. No, this will be very evil, it’s probably not true but I always have (this will be evil, I’m sorry) this suspicion that when you see these perfect organic apples and those half rotten apples which cost three times, two times more, I always have a suspicion that they pick out the nice apples and sell them cheap, then the remaining rotten apples they say why don’t we sell them as organic as... I know, I’m not too evil now. All I’m saying is immediately something different. Look because we are all cynical like that, who trusts it? I’m saying something different. I’m saying first, I’m the first one to be fully aware of the what we popularly call from Iraq onwards collateral damage. Like how it, how difficult genetic... I mean the problem with genetic manipulations is, you know, nature is dense, non-transparent. And you change this, you never know what... like a nice simple example of this, when I was very young, you even if you are very old you remember him, Thor Heyerdahl. It was a Norwegian explorer who wanted to prove... he made Kon-Tiki a how do you call it, raft? And I think he crossed, was it from America from Asia to America whatever to prove how in prehistory it was able to do it. Then to prove that from Africa it was also possible to go to Latin America, he tried to repeat the same and this was relatively late, I think late 70s, late 60s, early 70s. And his raft boat being in the Egyptian style fell apart, it was tragedy just miles in front of Latin American coast. But then you know what he discovered? You know this typical Egyptian, okay we know them fuck it, typical from drawings, they have a mast how do you call it and then a rope which is holding its front. He thought this is pure aesthetics, some stupid ritual, and skipped that rope. And then he discovered that what he thought an unimportant just aesthetic supplement was really absolutely crucial to hold the entire ship together, you know. That’s the problem with we don’t know. For example, you know, I spoke with a, My God, you know here, where is the evil evil, all women are evil, the divine geneticist? She's over there. Ah, you see how, this is to, to confuse me you are here you are there, that’s evil. No, isn’t it that if you look at the genome and so on, isn’t it that there are so many redoubled elements where people are not quite sure, the basic reading is that just to make it safe, you know, nature is like a teacher who quite right rightly suspects that nature is stupid, I mean and says let’s repeat it two, three times so that, so that the body will get it. But isn’t it still a little bit more ambiguous in the sense that some things which from our knowledge now appear superficial, it’s still open what are the possible functions I think and so on, you know? So this is the problem. But what I’m saying is another thing that imagine yourself buying those disgusting rotten organic apples. What I’m saying is something very precise. It’s that we are more or less in our daily life cynical. Maybe you believe it, maybe not, you doubt. Maybe you are right, maybe not. I’m not such a pessimist. I’m sorry if I appear just making fun of honest organic farmers. What I’m saying is this, I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about you and me, ordinary customers. Why do you buy? I claim and I put as a wager Pascal wager or whatever that it’s more ideology. You basically tell to yourself who knows, it’s maybe true maybe not, but it makes me feel at least I feel good, at least I will do something for Mother Nature, I’m a member of a nice... you don’t agree? I don't agree at all. Really? I want to avoid pesticides and cancer. And sure, I feel good that I'm helping the world and everybody but it's, you know, it's frontline health care if you don't have it. Okay, maybe if you know it but I still and I’m not bluffing, I spoke spoke with someone who did... I’m not asking about what is true or not. I’m asking about why the majority people do it. I claim and from the reaction to this like once when I was developing this line a lady stood up, this was in Italy and says but you are ruining all of my life, but all my life is dedicated to this. It’s so clear that no, I I really think that that how should I put it, that this ideological moment of I’m doing something is pretty crucial and I claim it’s the same with recycling. There, okay let’s take recycling because there there is no doubt it’s good to recycle. Nobody says it’s not. What I’m saying is that recycling is so much propagated to make it easy for you. It’s a wonderful ecological operation. First is it makes guilty each of us so you don’t ask the big questions, you know. Because when you raise the big anti-capitalist questions they tell you oh wait a minute, but what about you? Are you aware that you are also guilty with your daily life blah blah, are you doing it or not? and so on and so on. So what I’m saying is that there is something of a superstitious superstition in the sense that I’m not sure but you know again it makes you feel good good, I’m doing something for Mother Earth and so on and so on. Maybe we disagree here but I do think that this ideology of solidarity which is again absolutely crucial for today’s capitalism. You cannot even imagine today’s capitalism without charity, human care and so on and so on. Why? Because I claim it has a crucial ideological function of depoliticizing the situation. You know... yeah immediately I will give you just a minute. Just picking up, if we recover the food example. Yeah. Can you take into account the... this is actually the reason you're paying more money is because you're afraid of cancer. Because? Because you're afraid of cancer. Ah that would be yeah, but even these fears are totally ideological yes in this sense. Yeah true true, I agree with this true, and although I don't like so much Woody Allen, but he has in one of his late movies I think a wonderful line, he says... You're buying health... the idea is that you're buying health. Yeah yeah. What I want to say is that Woody Allen says that once decades ago the big question was does
artificial. Nature is not an order, nature is not balanced order that we then humans through our hubris ruined or whatever. And this does not mean okay it’s already chaos we don’t have to worry. No, the situation is even worse. Of course we can measure and we should how with our exploitation we can ruin it, global warming blah blah, but we should always be aware that we have nowhere to return. You know what I mean? There is no natural balance Mother Earth whatever where we can return. This is why as I... in my maybe you know the line of talk, in my regular attacks on this kind of Mother Earth ecology, I especially like to attack as pure case of ideology the so-called mode of life or how do they call it, way of life ecology. Which, you know, this kind of a false personification. You know, did you recycle the Coke can? Did you put newspaper... Of course I’m doing it, it’s good to do it, but let’s be serious. This is not the solution. This is a clear case of everyday life ideology. They make you do this so that you feel good. You know it’s even, you must know it but I like to repeat it so nasty because it happened four or five times that somebody started to cry you are ruining my life attacked me when I took this example: organic farming. Okay, it’s good, but do you really believe in it? Maybe, maybe not. I have always this paranoiac suspicion that you know in the store you have these beautiful genetically modified apples which are horror. You know, they change the genes so that they don’t rot. And I discovered this horror once, I went on a trip from my home and I forgot there three of these genetically modified perfect apples. It was summer, hot. I returned three weeks later, the apples were still absolutely... you know, in heat, can you imagine? Okay, but then... You don't trust organic? Sorry? Does that mean you don't trust organic food? Uh, no, my cynicism is this one. No, this will be very evil, it’s probably not true but I always have (this will be evil, I’m sorry) this suspicion that when you see these perfect organic apples and those half rotten apples which cost three times, two times more, I always have a suspicion that they pick out the nice apples and sell them cheap, then the remaining rotten apples they say why don’t we sell them as organic as... I know, I’m not too evil now. All I’m saying is immediately something different. Look because we are all cynical like that, who trusts it? I’m saying something different. I’m saying first, I’m the first one to be fully aware of the what we popularly call from Iraq onwards collateral damage. Like how it, how difficult genetic... I mean the problem with genetic manipulations is, you know, nature is dense, non-transparent. And you change this, you never know what... like a nice simple example of this, when I was very young, you even if you are very old you remember him, Thor Heyerdahl. It was a Norwegian explorer who wanted to prove... he made Kon-Tiki a how do you call it, raft? And I think he crossed, was it from America from Asia to America whatever to prove how in prehistory it was able to do it. Then to prove that from Africa it was also possible to go to Latin America, he tried to repeat the same and this was relatively late, I think late 70s, late 60s, early 70s. And his raft boat being in the Egyptian style fell apart, it was tragedy just miles in front of Latin American coast. But then you know what he discovered? You know this typical Egyptian, okay we know them fuck it, typical from drawings, they have a mast how do you call it and then a rope which is holding its front. He thought this is pure aesthetics, some stupid ritual, and skipped that rope. And then he discovered that what he thought an unimportant just aesthetic supplement was really absolutely crucial to hold the entire ship together, you know. That’s the problem with we don’t know. For example, you know, I spoke with a, My God, you know here, where is the evil evil, all women are evil, the divine geneticist? She's over there. Ah, you see how, this is to, to confuse me you are here you are there, that’s evil. No, isn’t it that if you look at the genome and so on, isn’t it that there are so many redoubled elements where people are not quite sure, the basic reading is that just to make it safe, you know, nature is like a teacher who quite right rightly suspects that nature is stupid, I mean and says let’s repeat it two, three times so that, so that the body will get it. But isn’t it still a little bit more ambiguous in the sense that some things which from our knowledge now appear superficial, it’s still open what are the possible functions I think and so on, you know? So this is the problem. But what I’m saying is another thing that imagine yourself buying those disgusting rotten organic apples. What I’m saying is something very precise. It’s that we are more or less in our daily life cynical. Maybe you believe it, maybe not, you doubt. Maybe you are right, maybe not. I’m not such a pessimist. I’m sorry if I appear just making fun of honest organic farmers. What I’m saying is this, I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about you and me, ordinary customers. Why do you buy? I claim and I put as a wager Pascal wager or whatever that it’s more ideology. You basically tell to yourself who knows, it’s maybe true maybe not, but it makes me feel at least I feel good, at least I will do something for Mother Nature, I’m a member of a nice... you don’t agree? I don't agree at all. Really? I want to avoid pesticides and cancer. And sure, I feel good that I'm helping the world and everybody but it's, you know, it's frontline health care if you don't have it. Okay, maybe if you know it but I still and I’m not bluffing, I spoke spoke with someone who did... I’m not asking about what is true or not. I’m asking about why the majority people do it. I claim and from the reaction to this like once when I was developing this line a lady stood up, this was in Italy and says but you are ruining all of my life, but all my life is dedicated to this. It’s so clear that no, I I really think that that how should I put it, that this ideological moment of I’m doing something is pretty crucial and I claim it’s the same with recycling. There, okay let’s take recycling because there there is no doubt it’s good to recycle. Nobody says it’s not. What I’m saying is that recycling is so much propagated to make it easy for you. It’s a wonderful ecological operation. First is it makes guilty each of us so you don’t ask the big questions, you know. Because when you raise the big anti-capitalist questions they tell you oh wait a minute, but what about you? Are you aware that you are also guilty with your daily life blah blah, are you doing it or not? and so on and so on. So what I’m saying is that there is something of a superstitious superstition in the sense that I’m not sure but you know again it makes you feel good good, I’m doing something for Mother Earth and so on and so on. Maybe we disagree here but I do think that this ideology of solidarity which is again absolutely crucial for today’s capitalism. You cannot even imagine today’s capitalism without charity, human care and so on and so on. Why? Because I claim it has a crucial ideological function of depoliticizing the situation. You know... yeah immediately I will give you just a minute. Just picking up, if we recover the food example. Yeah. Can you take into account the... this is actually the reason you're paying more money is because you're afraid of cancer. Because? Because you're afraid of cancer. Ah that would be yeah, but even these fears are totally ideological yes in this sense. Yeah true true, I agree with this true, and although I don't like so much Woody Allen, but he has in one of his late movies I think a wonderful line, he says... You're buying health... the idea is that you're buying health. Yeah yeah. What I want to say is that Woody Allen says that once decades ago the big question was does
unknown
she love me or not, yes or no?. Now
she love me or not, yes or no?. Now
Slavoj Žižek
the big question is—referring to that after test—is it positive or negative?. The test. Sorry, okay let... I will go on but... Well, I don't know if you're buying health, I agree that nature is random. You know, you're not going to get rid of cancer by eating an organic apple. Yeah. And so, I mean, but... Yeah but he is right but all the propaganda for organic is that... Half of that's heavy labor propaganda but so is... But that's what I'm saying, just that it's the... Exactly, that's what I'm thinking about, the ideological moment that I'm thinking about is the cost comparison. Who cares if you spend more money on it... No here I am more cynical. I claim that the very act fact that you spend more money makes you feel good. You see, I am generous, I did something for nature and so on. You know, that’s the most intelligent market strategy where you are not trying to sell it cheap, you raise the price. This is the true... It's a strategy but it's true, you have to keep an organic farm free of pesticides for seven years before it can be classified as organic. There's all of these reasons why costs are more. It's not... I agree, my God I’m sorry that I took this path of organic farming I have nothing against you. So I will give you another example of ideology, of pure ideology: smoking. Yes, it’s true, but did you notice a strange thing which demonstrates how this focusing on smoking is ideologically overdetermined? Did you notice, this is my experience in the United States, the same left liberal at least academic intellectuals who are against smoking, I mean like I was shocked once I can even tell you the name: Ken Reinhard, UC Irvine,
the big question is—referring to that after test—is it positive or negative?. The test. Sorry, okay let... I will go on but... Well, I don't know if you're buying health, I agree that nature is random. You know, you're not going to get rid of cancer by eating an organic apple. Yeah. And so, I mean, but... Yeah but he is right but all the propaganda for organic is that... Half of that's heavy labor propaganda but so is... But that's what I'm saying, just that it's the... Exactly, that's what I'm thinking about, the ideological moment that I'm thinking about is the cost comparison. Who cares if you spend more money on it... No here I am more cynical. I claim that the very act fact that you spend more money makes you feel good. You see, I am generous, I did something for nature and so on. You know, that’s the most intelligent market strategy where you are not trying to sell it cheap, you raise the price. This is the true... It's a strategy but it's true, you have to keep an organic farm free of pesticides for seven years before it can be classified as organic. There's all of these reasons why costs are more. It's not... I agree, my God I’m sorry that I took this path of organic farming I have nothing against you. So I will give you another example of ideology, of pure ideology: smoking. Yes, it’s true, but did you notice a strange thing which demonstrates how this focusing on smoking is ideologically overdetermined? Did you notice, this is my experience in the United States, the same left liberal at least academic intellectuals who are against smoking, I mean like I was shocked once I can even tell you the name: Ken Reinhard, UC Irvine,
unknown
no UCLA, Los Angeles.
no UCLA, Los Angeles.
Slavoj Žižek
Once I was with my Slovenian friends there and not me but the other two Slovenian friends Mladen Dolar and Alenka Zupančič are chain smokers. So they said can we smoke?. They told him we know you don't smoke but we can step out on the garden. He says no, garden is part of the house okay. They then said but we can go out on the street to smoke. He said no no, neighbors will see you and they will say what kind of friends am I inviting here and so on and so on. Okay, okay what I’m saying is that then after this debate was over he started to distribute to finish the evening hard drugs. And he didn't see like I mean whatever hard drugs are, not marijuana, fuck it, they are more dangerous than a cigarette, you know. And it’s a good question why and this is a nice proof of how it’s not true that our societies are consumerist. No, if by consumerism you mean this radical let’s go to the end, there are one or two types of consumerism, for example which is why smoking is so disturbing. You know like... because... let me tell you another example, maybe you know it. You know you have now this so-called e-cigarettes, you know, where you just inhale what’s the bullshit... nicotine, yeah and it hurts no one. But although some companies or even planes promote it, I was told by my friends who use it that most of them don’t like it for you to smoke. Like a friend of mine, I can even tell you the name, Eva Gilmer the boss for theory at Suhrkamp Verlag, the big German company, she told me she has this one and on a flight she was asked not to use it by the the the flight attendant. And she countered why not, it’s absolutely not even the danger of passive smoking. You know what was a very interesting theoretical answer? No, the policy of our airline is that you display in this way an addiction in an indecent way, and this is bad influence. I mean it's quite a... It's a censorship. It's essentially a censorship because it's about the
Once I was with my Slovenian friends there and not me but the other two Slovenian friends Mladen Dolar and Alenka Zupančič are chain smokers. So they said can we smoke?. They told him we know you don't smoke but we can step out on the garden. He says no, garden is part of the house okay. They then said but we can go out on the street to smoke. He said no no, neighbors will see you and they will say what kind of friends am I inviting here and so on and so on. Okay, okay what I’m saying is that then after this debate was over he started to distribute to finish the evening hard drugs. And he didn't see like I mean whatever hard drugs are, not marijuana, fuck it, they are more dangerous than a cigarette, you know. And it’s a good question why and this is a nice proof of how it’s not true that our societies are consumerist. No, if by consumerism you mean this radical let’s go to the end, there are one or two types of consumerism, for example which is why smoking is so disturbing. You know like... because... let me tell you another example, maybe you know it. You know you have now this so-called e-cigarettes, you know, where you just inhale what’s the bullshit... nicotine, yeah and it hurts no one. But although some companies or even planes promote it, I was told by my friends who use it that most of them don’t like it for you to smoke. Like a friend of mine, I can even tell you the name, Eva Gilmer the boss for theory at Suhrkamp Verlag, the big German company, she told me she has this one and on a flight she was asked not to use it by the the the flight attendant. And she countered why not, it’s absolutely not even the danger of passive smoking. You know what was a very interesting theoretical answer? No, the policy of our airline is that you display in this way an addiction in an indecent way, and this is bad influence. I mean it's quite a... It's a censorship. It's essentially a censorship because it's about the
unknown
message, it's
message, it's
Slavoj Žižek
not about the act. Yeah yeah. And she was... and but again, did you also notice how smoking, how it progressed? First it was just a small message smoking may damage your health. Then the letters get larger, then then they got more brutal, like it’s no longer just smoking mayhem it’s like smoking kills,
not about the act. Yeah yeah. And she was... and but again, did you also notice how smoking, how it progressed? First it was just a small message smoking may damage your health. Then the letters get larger, then then they got more brutal, like it’s no longer just smoking mayhem it’s like smoking kills,
unknown
smoking
smoking
Slavoj Žižek
renders you impotent and so on. And I love Greeks, the crazy guy, maybe you know it. Do you know that the progressive smoking leftists already have an answer to this? A nice joke. A guy goes to a... a traffic to buy cigarettes and said okay give me that one whatever name it, Marlboro. And he gets it and
renders you impotent and so on. And I love Greeks, the crazy guy, maybe you know it. Do you know that the progressive smoking leftists already have an answer to this? A nice joke. A guy goes to a... a traffic to buy cigarettes and said okay give me that one whatever name it, Marlboro. And he gets it and
unknown
he sees that that Marlboro causes smoking causes cancer. No? He said
he sees that that Marlboro causes smoking causes cancer. No? He said
Slavoj Žižek
no I don't like cancer give me another one. And it says smoking causes heart
no I don't like cancer give me another one. And it says smoking causes heart
unknown
disease. He said no and
disease. He said no and
Slavoj Žižek
then
then
unknown
they gave me they gave him the third one smoking causes impotence. And he says no no, then give me cancer. You see what I mean? impotence, no? Because... and then finally in some countries, was it in Brazil also, in some in Europe, you get now these terrifying photos, you know. Like
they gave me they gave him the third one smoking causes impotence. And he says no no, then give me cancer. You see what I mean? impotence, no? Because... and then finally in some countries, was it in Brazil also, in some in Europe, you get now these terrifying photos, you know. Like
Slavoj Žižek
open lungs or whatever. I mean again, to avoid any misunderstanding. I don’t smoke. And I’m totally for, you know, I like this Hollywood, one was with I think who is that that guy, the Australian actor... The Insider, Al Pacino and... Russell Crowe. Yeah, you remember when he is the the the informant. The Insider. Yeah
open lungs or whatever. I mean again, to avoid any misunderstanding. I don’t smoke. And I’m totally for, you know, I like this Hollywood, one was with I think who is that that guy, the Australian actor... The Insider, Al Pacino and... Russell Crowe. Yeah, you remember when he is the the the informant. The Insider. Yeah
unknown
yeah yeah. So I’m all for this. I’m not say... all I’m saying is there is something absolutely suspicious in
yeah yeah. So I’m all for this. I’m not say... all I’m saying is there is something absolutely suspicious in
Slavoj Žižek
this focus on smoking, because the attitude today is and this is the other side of our consumerist permissivity: yeah you can do whatever you want but in a censored moderate healthy form. Like you know this old joke that I repeat all the time: like Coke yes but Diet Coke, chocolate without sugar, and you go on, sausage without fat. Again the problem is that they didn’t yet manage to do cigarettes without nicotine, you know. And I claim that even sex is moving in this direction. This is where I stopped, I lost my thread two days ago when I went a little bit into this how love is, love or passionate attachment is more and more prohibited today. Didn’t I already told you, I’m sorry here if I repeat myself one of my most most desperate experiences, depressive. In an airline journal no how I read a text praising sex. But how? In this politically correct way. You know you should make love as often as possible because it’s good for your health. It’s better than exercise, it strengthens your muscles, it’s good for the heart rhythm. And they are so obscene that at the end even they advocate deep kissing, what before Iraq war, this was the standard joke, you know when Americans changed French fries to freedom fries, you know. My friends in United States immediately made a joke like if I want some of you (I will not be personal) to give you a French kiss I will say freedom kiss, freedom kiss no? And yeah they praise this deep French kiss, the idea is that it strengthens the muscles here so they open and the saliva you take out and so on. You know... this, this is the truth of consumerism. Consumerism is not this shop till you drop, it’s always economy. The formula of con... you know who are true consumers? This is usually immediately quoted as making some of making fun of them but I like it: these vulgar Russian nouveau riche oligarchs. You know this one of the nice, it’s very simple brutal joke, not even funny, but the tendency is the right one. This joke mocks their vulgarity how the point is just to spend money, no? One of them said look, I have this watch, it cost me dollars, I bought it in that store. And the other guy tells him you are so stupid, in the nearby store you can get it for dollars, you know. The point is to spend... this is the true consumerism. But no, you know what’s the logic of our consumerism? It’s always this economy like: buy two and get one for free. And this is my eternal temptation immediately to you. You remember when you buy for example typical how do you call it, toothpaste? You know how sometimes it’s directly marked like the top third is in another color you get this for free. And my temptation is always to say can I get just the part you give for free, sorry. The point is that it's selling. It's working. And the reason it's working is because they play with our emotions and our feelings. Yeah but nonetheless I agree and they know that people are depressed, that people are looking for pleasure and looking to find some way to make themselves feel... I agree with you, just I think things are here complex in the sense of what... What is left to us? Yes yes but... We should use our critical thinking, you know? Yeah yeah, but now but first no first here I’m a little bit more of a pessimist. I think that this it’s not as simple as that. Don’t underestimate most of the people. I claim the mystery is precisely what I was telling about everyday superstitions: you know it that it’s not true or whatever but you still do it, you still believe it at some level. I’m more and more convinced that this fetishist formula, you know, je sais bien mais quand même, I know very well but... is crucial in everyday ideology. I don’t think people are stupid. Of course they know I am manipulated. But still you allow. You don’t think... I disagree. Really? I teach media literacy. Yes. I tell my students, how many hours a day do you use media? Seven, eight, ten hours. Yeah. They have no idea who owns it, how much money goes into it, what how they're being manipulated. These are year olds. They have no idea. I see, of course. No, I agree here. What I’m only saying is that and sorry I was at a more elementary level: when you go to a supermarket and see there is free, you absolutely know, because we are cynics in daily lives, like what's the trick, it's you automatically assume they do this to earn more money, to rip you off even more. Nobody even thinks oh how good is this company it gives... you know what I mean? I was just referring to this how you absolutely know it’s manipulation. In the United States we have such an individualistic society that people are so percent on antidepressants, they're looking for pleasure and happiness. And when they are watching that a BMW being advertised and next to it is a beautiful model, they think "oh if I buy my car I'm going to have the model next to it that comes with it". I know, but I will tell you something else which will be an argument for me. I read an article which, my God, I hope it’s true because it’s a wonderful message. That they did a correlation between, well, your social status and not just rich but also intellectual and so on and use of antidepressants. The more you are educated and cultured, that is to say the more you should know it’s a manipulation, the more you use them, you know what I mean. That’s what... like precisely those who should have known how it is. Like it is so crazy, I always established a rule, you know which structure of belief I’m referring to here. When I was young, you remember those stupid times, Gagarin, the first Soviet cosmonaut. There was a wonderful Soviet joke which indicates what I want to say. It’s that Gagarin, the first cosmonaut, is first received by Nikita Khrushchev, no? Soviet leader, and he tells him in private in the office in Kremlin you know I must tell you something Comrade Khrushchev, horrible. I was up there and I saw angels, there is God up there. And Khrushchev tells him I know I know, just don't tell it to anyone. Okay. Then he is received by Pope in Rome. Gagarin tells him you know I must tell you something, it's horrible. I was up there in the sky, there is no paradise, there is no God. And Pope tells him I know I know, don't tell it around. I mean this is effectively the structure I claim of belief. So the shock I experience, I have I know some they even admitted in books some great brain scientists. And not so much Dennett as more who is that popular one... Damasio. Sorry? No no no, Damasio I don’t like it I will tell you why. He wants to appear kind... like instead of simply saying when you hear a sound this happens to your ear. This is his typical procedure from his one of his books. He says yesterday evening I had a guest, that famous Portuguese piano player woman and she played a melody and you know I hate this like he wants to know that he is a man of... but another one, my God, who did that The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat? Oliver Sacks. Yeah yeah. You know I like it so much. He should know, brain scientist, but he’s all the time going to a psychoanalyst. Even if it’s literally the same structure as here. And on the
this focus on smoking, because the attitude today is and this is the other side of our consumerist permissivity: yeah you can do whatever you want but in a censored moderate healthy form. Like you know this old joke that I repeat all the time: like Coke yes but Diet Coke, chocolate without sugar, and you go on, sausage without fat. Again the problem is that they didn’t yet manage to do cigarettes without nicotine, you know. And I claim that even sex is moving in this direction. This is where I stopped, I lost my thread two days ago when I went a little bit into this how love is, love or passionate attachment is more and more prohibited today. Didn’t I already told you, I’m sorry here if I repeat myself one of my most most desperate experiences, depressive. In an airline journal no how I read a text praising sex. But how? In this politically correct way. You know you should make love as often as possible because it’s good for your health. It’s better than exercise, it strengthens your muscles, it’s good for the heart rhythm. And they are so obscene that at the end even they advocate deep kissing, what before Iraq war, this was the standard joke, you know when Americans changed French fries to freedom fries, you know. My friends in United States immediately made a joke like if I want some of you (I will not be personal) to give you a French kiss I will say freedom kiss, freedom kiss no? And yeah they praise this deep French kiss, the idea is that it strengthens the muscles here so they open and the saliva you take out and so on. You know... this, this is the truth of consumerism. Consumerism is not this shop till you drop, it’s always economy. The formula of con... you know who are true consumers? This is usually immediately quoted as making some of making fun of them but I like it: these vulgar Russian nouveau riche oligarchs. You know this one of the nice, it’s very simple brutal joke, not even funny, but the tendency is the right one. This joke mocks their vulgarity how the point is just to spend money, no? One of them said look, I have this watch, it cost me dollars, I bought it in that store. And the other guy tells him you are so stupid, in the nearby store you can get it for dollars, you know. The point is to spend... this is the true consumerism. But no, you know what’s the logic of our consumerism? It’s always this economy like: buy two and get one for free. And this is my eternal temptation immediately to you. You remember when you buy for example typical how do you call it, toothpaste? You know how sometimes it’s directly marked like the top third is in another color you get this for free. And my temptation is always to say can I get just the part you give for free, sorry. The point is that it's selling. It's working. And the reason it's working is because they play with our emotions and our feelings. Yeah but nonetheless I agree and they know that people are depressed, that people are looking for pleasure and looking to find some way to make themselves feel... I agree with you, just I think things are here complex in the sense of what... What is left to us? Yes yes but... We should use our critical thinking, you know? Yeah yeah, but now but first no first here I’m a little bit more of a pessimist. I think that this it’s not as simple as that. Don’t underestimate most of the people. I claim the mystery is precisely what I was telling about everyday superstitions: you know it that it’s not true or whatever but you still do it, you still believe it at some level. I’m more and more convinced that this fetishist formula, you know, je sais bien mais quand même, I know very well but... is crucial in everyday ideology. I don’t think people are stupid. Of course they know I am manipulated. But still you allow. You don’t think... I disagree. Really? I teach media literacy. Yes. I tell my students, how many hours a day do you use media? Seven, eight, ten hours. Yeah. They have no idea who owns it, how much money goes into it, what how they're being manipulated. These are year olds. They have no idea. I see, of course. No, I agree here. What I’m only saying is that and sorry I was at a more elementary level: when you go to a supermarket and see there is free, you absolutely know, because we are cynics in daily lives, like what's the trick, it's you automatically assume they do this to earn more money, to rip you off even more. Nobody even thinks oh how good is this company it gives... you know what I mean? I was just referring to this how you absolutely know it’s manipulation. In the United States we have such an individualistic society that people are so percent on antidepressants, they're looking for pleasure and happiness. And when they are watching that a BMW being advertised and next to it is a beautiful model, they think "oh if I buy my car I'm going to have the model next to it that comes with it". I know, but I will tell you something else which will be an argument for me. I read an article which, my God, I hope it’s true because it’s a wonderful message. That they did a correlation between, well, your social status and not just rich but also intellectual and so on and use of antidepressants. The more you are educated and cultured, that is to say the more you should know it’s a manipulation, the more you use them, you know what I mean. That’s what... like precisely those who should have known how it is. Like it is so crazy, I always established a rule, you know which structure of belief I’m referring to here. When I was young, you remember those stupid times, Gagarin, the first Soviet cosmonaut. There was a wonderful Soviet joke which indicates what I want to say. It’s that Gagarin, the first cosmonaut, is first received by Nikita Khrushchev, no? Soviet leader, and he tells him in private in the office in Kremlin you know I must tell you something Comrade Khrushchev, horrible. I was up there and I saw angels, there is God up there. And Khrushchev tells him I know I know, just don't tell it to anyone. Okay. Then he is received by Pope in Rome. Gagarin tells him you know I must tell you something, it's horrible. I was up there in the sky, there is no paradise, there is no God. And Pope tells him I know I know, don't tell it around. I mean this is effectively the structure I claim of belief. So the shock I experience, I have I know some they even admitted in books some great brain scientists. And not so much Dennett as more who is that popular one... Damasio. Sorry? No no no, Damasio I don’t like it I will tell you why. He wants to appear kind... like instead of simply saying when you hear a sound this happens to your ear. This is his typical procedure from his one of his books. He says yesterday evening I had a guest, that famous Portuguese piano player woman and she played a melody and you know I hate this like he wants to know that he is a man of... but another one, my God, who did that The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat? Oliver Sacks. Yeah yeah. You know I like it so much. He should know, brain scientist, but he’s all the time going to a psychoanalyst. Even if it’s literally the same structure as here. And on the
unknown
other hand, I know starting with and she will tell you this
other hand, I know starting with and she will tell you this
Slavoj Žižek
like my good friend, she is here, Avital Ronell. Deconstructionist, everything Freudian dismissing, yeah but she takes all the pills and it... let me she practices exactly the opposite. And I like this symmetry how maybe only being a brain scientist can really do analysis and vice versa, no? You really believe secretly in brain sciences and then because I noticed, you know, that this is true because many my Freudian friends who are writing books, I remember how they tell me this traumatic they told me you know, a friend of mine was in analysis and you know I was so shocked, it really worked, you know like. People who spend their life propagating
like my good friend, she is here, Avital Ronell. Deconstructionist, everything Freudian dismissing, yeah but she takes all the pills and it... let me she practices exactly the opposite. And I like this symmetry how maybe only being a brain scientist can really do analysis and vice versa, no? You really believe secretly in brain sciences and then because I noticed, you know, that this is true because many my Freudian friends who are writing books, I remember how they tell me this traumatic they told me you know, a friend of mine was in analysis and you know I was so shocked, it really worked, you know like. People who spend their life propagating
unknown
psychoanalysis are totally shocked when they learn that it even works you know a little bit, you know. No no, wait a minute,
psychoanalysis are totally shocked when they learn that it even works you know a little bit, you know. No no, wait a minute,
Slavoj Žižek
I don't want to exaggerate, you know what I mean, no? All I’m saying the point I’m trying to make, and I hope we agree here, it’s just that the notion of belief, precisely not in some theoretical sense, but what does it mean to believe and so on in everyday life is a complex notion. It’s never simply a question of do you believe, don’t you believe, you know? For example, this is why I always refer with such a pleasure to my communist youth where I got the lesson. Why? Because at least till mid-70s, ex-Yugoslavia was a totally cynical regime. By cynical I don’t mean more evil than others. By cynical I mean not only that those in power,
I don't want to exaggerate, you know what I mean, no? All I’m saying the point I’m trying to make, and I hope we agree here, it’s just that the notion of belief, precisely not in some theoretical sense, but what does it mean to believe and so on in everyday life is a complex notion. It’s never simply a question of do you believe, don’t you believe, you know? For example, this is why I always refer with such a pleasure to my communist youth where I got the lesson. Why? Because at least till mid-70s, ex-Yugoslavia was a totally cynical regime. By cynical I don’t mean more evil than others. By cynical I mean not only that those in power,
unknown
most of them didn’t believe in their own ideology, the Yugoslav ideology self-management,
most of them didn’t believe in their own ideology, the Yugoslav ideology self-management,
Slavoj Žižek
so you know all Yugoslav narcissism was we are not like the other Soviet East block, they are Stalinist state socialism, with us it’s direct democracy self-management. Okay. It wasn't only that you didn’t have to believe. It took me a long time to discover this: you have to not believe. Like it's a tragic story, maybe you know it but I like to repeat it. I had, this was mid-70s, two friends who worked at the Cultural Commission of the Central Committee. They lost their job. Why? They really believed in official ideology. And it was immediately perceived by those in power as a threat. The idea was a very simple one, I spoke with one of the people who purged them: if you take it seriously it’s one step towards dissident because then you will soon see that it doesn't... and didn’t I tell you, I must repeat it to you, maybe you know it, my ultra experience. Slovenia we are lucky was a small country, two million, no? So for us General Secretary of the party is not a big guy up there whom you see on screen, it’s an ordinary jerk you can even meet him on the street even if they wanted to play being popular without a bodyguard. So okay... I was once as a young guy at a meeting they convoked us students where there was a speech by General Secretary at that point of Slovenian Communist Party, no? And this guy made the usual point to us students: learn Marxism, read both volumes of Capital of Marx and always follow the fourth thesis on Feuerbach: not only interpret the world but... no? And then I couldn't resist it, I after the talk I approached him and told him Comrade Secretary you know I advise you if you give this speech at some further point, so that people will not laugh at you, like there are three volumes of Capital and it's thesis My God how stupid I was. I got the answer of my lifetime which was, privately of course: I know this but that was my point, I don’t care. Was it beautiful, I mean. That's how it functions ideology, you know? Like I like this paradox that you actively it's not only, you know, that they don't care if you believe or not, you actively have to non-believe. And I claim it's the same with every nationalism in a way. Like especially I read with Orwell a nice text on British this aristocratic upper class nationalism. And he develops very nice how the truly being British includes making cynical remarks, fun of your identity. It's an absolute condition. Of course then, well, things are for the real blah blah. But okay let me go on. Again all I'm saying is that the belief is a very cynical mystical and mystical I mean an enigmatic thing. Let me give you another example. I was a couple of years ago in Israel and I spoke with a an Israeli psychiatrist who is specialized in studying these suicide bombers, no? Okay I didn't like too much, it’s not exactly my political orientation, no? I mean the Isra... but he told me something interesting. He told me that he made interviews with many suicide bombers who just failed bomb... and the distinct impression he got is that: it's not what you think. That, you know, all that primitive depiction, you know: they thought oh in a couple of seconds I will be in paradise with virgins and so on. Which incidentally every honest Muslim will tell you, no, this is a mistranslation. The work, the term used for virgins is some term which is used for the best, how do you call it sour, how do you dry raisins? The dry raisins. The... how do you call when you dry the... sorry? A date? No, no, raisins, raisins. Yeah yeah yeah raisins. You know like dried balls of whatever grape, whatever. Okay, so that the expression is this and you have to take into account that to offer this to a guest, this best quality raisins, was the big sign of hospitality. So Quran is here quite a decent text, no? It says like it only means you will be received well, no? And then it’s a later misreading. You know which is another speaking about belief of how difficult things are to accept. You know my favorite guys, I mentioned them, Assassins, those Alamut. You know this myth that they, the way they were manipulated is: they were drugged by their leader and then awakened with naked girls screwing them and then reawakened so that they thought they were in paradise. And then they were ready to kill, die to go back there. There is only one problem with this story. If you know more tell me I read a lot about this, books on Assassins. The first time this story is reported is 14th century Western sources. It's absolutely sure and you know why. It's clear that the Western guys who accompanied the Crusaders couldn't believe... it was too shattering for them: how someone can be so heroic to without a problem... so they invented, projected their own dream into it, they invented it. And this is, I didn't lose my thread, back to Lacan. This is how one should understand this Lacan's thesis: desire is the desire of the other. You know like what they identified as this exotic Oriental desire, you know: ooh they're ready to kill themselves, they are so stupid they believe in... no, it was their own desire. I'm sorry if I repeat myself, it's in my first book that I report another story which is the best one that I... sorry if you know it. For what does it mean this mediation of desire, desire of desire of the other. I'm sorry if you know it. It's an old anthropological myth which is beautiful. In mid-19th century an anthropological expedition went to some of those really dark, I think is how do you pronounce it, not New Zealand, New Guinea. Papua New Guinea? Yeah yeah yeah there, deep in jungle, there was a rumor that there is there in the middle some tribe very primitive where they put death masks and dance a horrible dance of death. That was the rumor. So they want to... so okay they came to that tribe in the evening, tired, they explained to them what they want can you please dance that dance for us?. And then it was evening, they went to sleep. In the morning they awakened and the the natives, the tribe members, really performed exactly the dance that they expected. Okay, they returned to haha civilization, this guy satisfied, you see, wrote an article on primitive passions of... unfortunately years later another expedition went to that tribe. And they did their job more properly, they learned properly the language and asked them what really happened with that. And you can guess what happened, it’s beautiful story. The natives somehow they just tried to be polite and somehow they got it that these guys want some horrible dance. They were polite people so for the whole night they were working, inventing this dance, just to be good good hosts, you know? So what they thought that they discovered the ooh this exotic... it was literally their own desire to the other. Sorry. I think Goffman spoke about that, he spoke about that staged ethnicity, as staged ethnicity and staged folklore, and how it works and how when you go into a particular country you have this this dance or this ritual that you may that anthropologists and people from the outside feel like this is representative of the people's culture, but in actuality it's a stage... it's a very small portion, it's absolutely non-representative. Yeah but I have a 'but' here. You know which one? Nonetheless, the miracle is that even if it's artificial, it can can as it were become authentic. You know, for example, when I was in Argentina I read a very good history of Argentina where they claim that you know you have a certain Argentinean self-image, you know: Gaucho, endless Pampas, blah blah. You know how this emerged? Okay they were doing this. In earliest earliest 19th century it was fashionable, later even Darwin went there, many Western English and so on travelers went there and wrote their impressions, memoirs of Argentina. And they created this myth. You know, Argentina... but what I like so much is that and it doesn't make it any less authentic that Argentinians simply accept this. The way they were and I claim that this is every national identity has a little bit of this. You always imagine when you want to idealize your nation how you are viewed by the other. For example, four weeks ago I saw this, that’s why I love them it’s an ultimate nightmare bad joke. You know if you go to demilitarized zone in Korea, there is at one point where you can see a North Korean city relatively close. And you know it’s the usual rip-off, you put in coins with a... you can... okay. But the beauty is this: North Koreans know it. So that city only, you know otherwise it’s hunger, horror, they painted freshly all the houses, but only the southern side. They gave people better dresses, but people are obliged there to take walks every evening. They... this city otherwise they have all the time cuts of electricity, this city gets enough electricity. You know, and they claim to be so autonomous. It’s all how they were staged, it’s always it’s always like this. And let me tell you another experience. This is my own, not some tribe. I love them, I think this is authentic. Not, sorry, again in New Zealand and so on, they do deal a lot with authentic popular art. My God, if he were to be a woman I would have married him. I spoke with their art agent. And he told me how this really works. He goes regularly to New York to see what are the new trends. And then he comes back and gives hints to these totally authentic artists, you know, what kind of paintings would sell better. So this authentic folkloric native art again and again reinvented with the view to what will sell on... and I claim, I hope you got my point, I claim that this is much more... sorry and then yes. Even... first, you know that the word slave comes from not speaking in public, but in infinite mercy I give you... Thank you. How... Jean-Pierre Dupuy describes a similar mechanism. Oh I love him, yeah. But but his position stems from René Girard's whole mimetism thing, which maybe it can be described better with desire is desire of the small other, because it's all about this mirrored thing and how from death you get this self-fulfilling... where is your position, where do you break with him? And how does that how does your examples differ from simple desire of the small other, since... Perfect, I wanted to go I promise you. No just to conclude just to conclude this line New Zealand and so on. I hope I didn't repeat this story here because it's the best why I think without kidding that there is nothing non-authentic about this, that on the contrary, this idea of original folkloric native art, non-influenced, this is a Western racist idea. Did you see that very interesting (I really mean it, because you know I don't have problems with political correctness, like you know once I was in an American campus and I said I want to go to a movie, no? And they told me oh wonderful professor we have a festival of South Korean or bullshit Romanian movies, I said fuck you, I want a multiplex, I want... Screw your art. So I don’t have problems with this.) But nonetheless even I violate my principles, so this was a native movie which is... did you see the Inuit (politically correct for Eskimos) a movie Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner? Yeah, yeah. But you know what I liked about it? I even met the guys, although the main guy, the actor unfortunately died of cancer immediately afterwards, I... they gave me complete material, books, and at some point it’s... the director gave an ingenious answer. Western journalists who wanted to celebrate the film told them looked into the original myth because this film restages an old Inuit myth of a family
so you know all Yugoslav narcissism was we are not like the other Soviet East block, they are Stalinist state socialism, with us it’s direct democracy self-management. Okay. It wasn't only that you didn’t have to believe. It took me a long time to discover this: you have to not believe. Like it's a tragic story, maybe you know it but I like to repeat it. I had, this was mid-70s, two friends who worked at the Cultural Commission of the Central Committee. They lost their job. Why? They really believed in official ideology. And it was immediately perceived by those in power as a threat. The idea was a very simple one, I spoke with one of the people who purged them: if you take it seriously it’s one step towards dissident because then you will soon see that it doesn't... and didn’t I tell you, I must repeat it to you, maybe you know it, my ultra experience. Slovenia we are lucky was a small country, two million, no? So for us General Secretary of the party is not a big guy up there whom you see on screen, it’s an ordinary jerk you can even meet him on the street even if they wanted to play being popular without a bodyguard. So okay... I was once as a young guy at a meeting they convoked us students where there was a speech by General Secretary at that point of Slovenian Communist Party, no? And this guy made the usual point to us students: learn Marxism, read both volumes of Capital of Marx and always follow the fourth thesis on Feuerbach: not only interpret the world but... no? And then I couldn't resist it, I after the talk I approached him and told him Comrade Secretary you know I advise you if you give this speech at some further point, so that people will not laugh at you, like there are three volumes of Capital and it's thesis My God how stupid I was. I got the answer of my lifetime which was, privately of course: I know this but that was my point, I don’t care. Was it beautiful, I mean. That's how it functions ideology, you know? Like I like this paradox that you actively it's not only, you know, that they don't care if you believe or not, you actively have to non-believe. And I claim it's the same with every nationalism in a way. Like especially I read with Orwell a nice text on British this aristocratic upper class nationalism. And he develops very nice how the truly being British includes making cynical remarks, fun of your identity. It's an absolute condition. Of course then, well, things are for the real blah blah. But okay let me go on. Again all I'm saying is that the belief is a very cynical mystical and mystical I mean an enigmatic thing. Let me give you another example. I was a couple of years ago in Israel and I spoke with a an Israeli psychiatrist who is specialized in studying these suicide bombers, no? Okay I didn't like too much, it’s not exactly my political orientation, no? I mean the Isra... but he told me something interesting. He told me that he made interviews with many suicide bombers who just failed bomb... and the distinct impression he got is that: it's not what you think. That, you know, all that primitive depiction, you know: they thought oh in a couple of seconds I will be in paradise with virgins and so on. Which incidentally every honest Muslim will tell you, no, this is a mistranslation. The work, the term used for virgins is some term which is used for the best, how do you call it sour, how do you dry raisins? The dry raisins. The... how do you call when you dry the... sorry? A date? No, no, raisins, raisins. Yeah yeah yeah raisins. You know like dried balls of whatever grape, whatever. Okay, so that the expression is this and you have to take into account that to offer this to a guest, this best quality raisins, was the big sign of hospitality. So Quran is here quite a decent text, no? It says like it only means you will be received well, no? And then it’s a later misreading. You know which is another speaking about belief of how difficult things are to accept. You know my favorite guys, I mentioned them, Assassins, those Alamut. You know this myth that they, the way they were manipulated is: they were drugged by their leader and then awakened with naked girls screwing them and then reawakened so that they thought they were in paradise. And then they were ready to kill, die to go back there. There is only one problem with this story. If you know more tell me I read a lot about this, books on Assassins. The first time this story is reported is 14th century Western sources. It's absolutely sure and you know why. It's clear that the Western guys who accompanied the Crusaders couldn't believe... it was too shattering for them: how someone can be so heroic to without a problem... so they invented, projected their own dream into it, they invented it. And this is, I didn't lose my thread, back to Lacan. This is how one should understand this Lacan's thesis: desire is the desire of the other. You know like what they identified as this exotic Oriental desire, you know: ooh they're ready to kill themselves, they are so stupid they believe in... no, it was their own desire. I'm sorry if I repeat myself, it's in my first book that I report another story which is the best one that I... sorry if you know it. For what does it mean this mediation of desire, desire of desire of the other. I'm sorry if you know it. It's an old anthropological myth which is beautiful. In mid-19th century an anthropological expedition went to some of those really dark, I think is how do you pronounce it, not New Zealand, New Guinea. Papua New Guinea? Yeah yeah yeah there, deep in jungle, there was a rumor that there is there in the middle some tribe very primitive where they put death masks and dance a horrible dance of death. That was the rumor. So they want to... so okay they came to that tribe in the evening, tired, they explained to them what they want can you please dance that dance for us?. And then it was evening, they went to sleep. In the morning they awakened and the the natives, the tribe members, really performed exactly the dance that they expected. Okay, they returned to haha civilization, this guy satisfied, you see, wrote an article on primitive passions of... unfortunately years later another expedition went to that tribe. And they did their job more properly, they learned properly the language and asked them what really happened with that. And you can guess what happened, it’s beautiful story. The natives somehow they just tried to be polite and somehow they got it that these guys want some horrible dance. They were polite people so for the whole night they were working, inventing this dance, just to be good good hosts, you know? So what they thought that they discovered the ooh this exotic... it was literally their own desire to the other. Sorry. I think Goffman spoke about that, he spoke about that staged ethnicity, as staged ethnicity and staged folklore, and how it works and how when you go into a particular country you have this this dance or this ritual that you may that anthropologists and people from the outside feel like this is representative of the people's culture, but in actuality it's a stage... it's a very small portion, it's absolutely non-representative. Yeah but I have a 'but' here. You know which one? Nonetheless, the miracle is that even if it's artificial, it can can as it were become authentic. You know, for example, when I was in Argentina I read a very good history of Argentina where they claim that you know you have a certain Argentinean self-image, you know: Gaucho, endless Pampas, blah blah. You know how this emerged? Okay they were doing this. In earliest earliest 19th century it was fashionable, later even Darwin went there, many Western English and so on travelers went there and wrote their impressions, memoirs of Argentina. And they created this myth. You know, Argentina... but what I like so much is that and it doesn't make it any less authentic that Argentinians simply accept this. The way they were and I claim that this is every national identity has a little bit of this. You always imagine when you want to idealize your nation how you are viewed by the other. For example, four weeks ago I saw this, that’s why I love them it’s an ultimate nightmare bad joke. You know if you go to demilitarized zone in Korea, there is at one point where you can see a North Korean city relatively close. And you know it’s the usual rip-off, you put in coins with a... you can... okay. But the beauty is this: North Koreans know it. So that city only, you know otherwise it’s hunger, horror, they painted freshly all the houses, but only the southern side. They gave people better dresses, but people are obliged there to take walks every evening. They... this city otherwise they have all the time cuts of electricity, this city gets enough electricity. You know, and they claim to be so autonomous. It’s all how they were staged, it’s always it’s always like this. And let me tell you another experience. This is my own, not some tribe. I love them, I think this is authentic. Not, sorry, again in New Zealand and so on, they do deal a lot with authentic popular art. My God, if he were to be a woman I would have married him. I spoke with their art agent. And he told me how this really works. He goes regularly to New York to see what are the new trends. And then he comes back and gives hints to these totally authentic artists, you know, what kind of paintings would sell better. So this authentic folkloric native art again and again reinvented with the view to what will sell on... and I claim, I hope you got my point, I claim that this is much more... sorry and then yes. Even... first, you know that the word slave comes from not speaking in public, but in infinite mercy I give you... Thank you. How... Jean-Pierre Dupuy describes a similar mechanism. Oh I love him, yeah. But but his position stems from René Girard's whole mimetism thing, which maybe it can be described better with desire is desire of the small other, because it's all about this mirrored thing and how from death you get this self-fulfilling... where is your position, where do you break with him? And how does that how does your examples differ from simple desire of the small other, since... Perfect, I wanted to go I promise you. No just to conclude just to conclude this line New Zealand and so on. I hope I didn't repeat this story here because it's the best why I think without kidding that there is nothing non-authentic about this, that on the contrary, this idea of original folkloric native art, non-influenced, this is a Western racist idea. Did you see that very interesting (I really mean it, because you know I don't have problems with political correctness, like you know once I was in an American campus and I said I want to go to a movie, no? And they told me oh wonderful professor we have a festival of South Korean or bullshit Romanian movies, I said fuck you, I want a multiplex, I want... Screw your art. So I don’t have problems with this.) But nonetheless even I violate my principles, so this was a native movie which is... did you see the Inuit (politically correct for Eskimos) a movie Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner? Yeah, yeah. But you know what I liked about it? I even met the guys, although the main guy, the actor unfortunately died of cancer immediately afterwards, I... they gave me complete material, books, and at some point it’s... the director gave an ingenious answer. Western journalists who wanted to celebrate the film told them looked into the original myth because this film restages an old Inuit myth of a family
unknown
conflict blah blah, but the point is this one: in the original myth, the ending is much more tragic. Basically they
conflict blah blah, but the point is this one: in the original myth, the ending is much more tragic. Basically they
Slavoj Žižek
all kill each other. Here as you know they just throw out the two bad guys and then unity is reconstituted and so on, much better. Okay. So he accused them, the journalist, the movie makers, of again a again making a compromise with commercial tastes, like betrayal, like commercial... why didn't you stick to the original myth, why did you do this cheap commercial move?. And he got a wonderful answer from the director who says you don't get it, it's our our tradition is precisely this constant retelling and changing to fit it the ongoing circumstances. This is how their tradition works. Their tradition is that there are new circumstances, you change the story and so on. The most non-traditional thing for them is this European obsession, you know with with the authentic
all kill each other. Here as you know they just throw out the two bad guys and then unity is reconstituted and so on, much better. Okay. So he accused them, the journalist, the movie makers, of again a again making a compromise with commercial tastes, like betrayal, like commercial... why didn't you stick to the original myth, why did you do this cheap commercial move?. And he got a wonderful answer from the director who says you don't get it, it's our our tradition is precisely this constant retelling and changing to fit it the ongoing circumstances. This is how their tradition works. Their tradition is that there are new circumstances, you change the story and so on. The most non-traditional thing for them is this European obsession, you know with with the authentic
unknown
version. This is why even when we are dealing
version. This is why even when we are dealing
Slavoj Žižek
with great myths of Europe like Antigone. (Don’t be afraid, I know I already told the jokes about three versions). But now I want to tell you something else. Do you know that Sophocles' Antigone which we perceive as the authentic one? Do you know that Sophocles' Antigone is a later brutal rewriting of the original myth or folk narrative whatever it was which, if I tell it to you, you would have said this is vulgar commercial... you know what happens? Do you know in original Antigone story? Antigone doesn't die, she it's much more melodramatic. She escapes with what's Creon's son, Haemon? She escapes with him to another city where they live in it's more like Count of Monte Cristo, where they live happily for years, breed a son, and then years later this son comes back to make on behalf of his parents revenge against Creon and then the story gets totally crazy because Creon has another daughter and this son now falls in love with... I mean, if I were to tell you the original authentic Antigone myth, you would have thought oh this is some stupid Hollywood cheap melodrama, you know? So again... yes, so we got into this mess. Let me return to that love and so on, where we all started. What is prohibited today, excess and so on. I really think and here we come more to theory. Lacan introduced a weird notion in his around I think: lathouse. It's a total neologism supposed to sound like a Greek word, L-A-T-H-O-U-S-E. Lathouse... this is basically his term for this sex toys like the idea is that we more and more rely in our pleasures on these consumerist objects and so on so that you don't even you don't need a partner, you just do it with a technical supplement. And I I saw one which I found wonderful. I’m tempted to use it, it’s so practical, you know. You buy it looks from outside like a big battery so that you are not embarrassed, you know. But you take the top off and it’s the vaginal opening. And then it’s wonderful. It has battery, electricity, and first you can regulate it. You can buy so
with great myths of Europe like Antigone. (Don’t be afraid, I know I already told the jokes about three versions). But now I want to tell you something else. Do you know that Sophocles' Antigone which we perceive as the authentic one? Do you know that Sophocles' Antigone is a later brutal rewriting of the original myth or folk narrative whatever it was which, if I tell it to you, you would have said this is vulgar commercial... you know what happens? Do you know in original Antigone story? Antigone doesn't die, she it's much more melodramatic. She escapes with what's Creon's son, Haemon? She escapes with him to another city where they live in it's more like Count of Monte Cristo, where they live happily for years, breed a son, and then years later this son comes back to make on behalf of his parents revenge against Creon and then the story gets totally crazy because Creon has another daughter and this son now falls in love with... I mean, if I were to tell you the original authentic Antigone myth, you would have thought oh this is some stupid Hollywood cheap melodrama, you know? So again... yes, so we got into this mess. Let me return to that love and so on, where we all started. What is prohibited today, excess and so on. I really think and here we come more to theory. Lacan introduced a weird notion in his around I think: lathouse. It's a total neologism supposed to sound like a Greek word, L-A-T-H-O-U-S-E. Lathouse... this is basically his term for this sex toys like the idea is that we more and more rely in our pleasures on these consumerist objects and so on so that you don't even you don't need a partner, you just do it with a technical supplement. And I I saw one which I found wonderful. I’m tempted to use it, it’s so practical, you know. You buy it looks from outside like a big battery so that you are not embarrassed, you know. But you take the top off and it’s the vaginal opening. And then it’s wonderful. It has battery, electricity, and first you can regulate it. You can buy so
unknown
that you stick it on the top, no? Plastic form of three... you can have vagina hairless, vagina with hair, it looks like anus and it looks like mouth. Like whatever you want you put on, then you can electrically regulate how tightly it squeezes you and how how quickly it shakes. At my years I'm saying you know I had time to go through the mess with real women. So let’s pay this one. But okay, that's what Lacan meant and Lacan openly says that this, that the problem today, the result of this last changes is
that you stick it on the top, no? Plastic form of three... you can have vagina hairless, vagina with hair, it looks like anus and it looks like mouth. Like whatever you want you put on, then you can electrically regulate how tightly it squeezes you and how how quickly it shakes. At my years I'm saying you know I had time to go through the mess with real women. So let’s pay this one. But okay, that's what Lacan meant and Lacan openly says that this, that the problem today, the result of this last changes is
Slavoj Žižek
that with what we mentioned as decline of paternal authority blah blah, you know Lacan says something very precise on the very last page of Seminar XI. He says that a successful, moderately, sexual relationship can only be done under the name as a under the shadow of the name of the father blah blah. So what do I want to tell you with this? Where is here... fuck it, is it raining? No? It’s just good. Uh, where did it go? Uh, I’m sorry if you know the story, but Darian Leader, the nice British Lacanian intelligent guy, told me a wonderful story from his own clinical practice. And here you can see it's a very simple story that he was a good Freudian. Like he had a patient who reported to him a slip of tongue. This patient told him that couples of days before this session he invited a lady to a hotel, first to eat with her and then of course up into a room, no? But then he made a slip. When he entered the restaurant instead of saying a table for two please he said to the waiter a bed for two please. No? Now, ah-ah, now comes the point. Here you see the genius. How to interpret this? Uh, you would have thought, oh clear Freudian slip. He wanted to be polite, eat, but his mind was already up there. Ah, he is a genius, Darian Leader. He says no it's the exact opposite. He was this postmodern solipsistic narcissist, that this remark bed for two please was a kind of a what he was afraid of is that he will enjoy eating there so much that he will forget about the heavy work, so it was just a it was kind of a censorship reminder, you know: this is just a foreplay don't enjoy this too much, remember the real work happens later. And isn't this often the tragic experience? I must tell you it happened to me with my first girlfriend, it was a tragic story when I was young, how what you think is just an instrument to get to a real thing. You start to enjoy it so much that you forget the... I remember I had a crush on a girl and to get her, she liked her father, I thought oh, one should be polite to her father, so it was a
that with what we mentioned as decline of paternal authority blah blah, you know Lacan says something very precise on the very last page of Seminar XI. He says that a successful, moderately, sexual relationship can only be done under the name as a under the shadow of the name of the father blah blah. So what do I want to tell you with this? Where is here... fuck it, is it raining? No? It’s just good. Uh, where did it go? Uh, I’m sorry if you know the story, but Darian Leader, the nice British Lacanian intelligent guy, told me a wonderful story from his own clinical practice. And here you can see it's a very simple story that he was a good Freudian. Like he had a patient who reported to him a slip of tongue. This patient told him that couples of days before this session he invited a lady to a hotel, first to eat with her and then of course up into a room, no? But then he made a slip. When he entered the restaurant instead of saying a table for two please he said to the waiter a bed for two please. No? Now, ah-ah, now comes the point. Here you see the genius. How to interpret this? Uh, you would have thought, oh clear Freudian slip. He wanted to be polite, eat, but his mind was already up there. Ah, he is a genius, Darian Leader. He says no it's the exact opposite. He was this postmodern solipsistic narcissist, that this remark bed for two please was a kind of a what he was afraid of is that he will enjoy eating there so much that he will forget about the heavy work, so it was just a it was kind of a censorship reminder, you know: this is just a foreplay don't enjoy this too much, remember the real work happens later. And isn't this often the tragic experience? I must tell you it happened to me with my first girlfriend, it was a tragic story when I was young, how what you think is just an instrument to get to a real thing. You start to enjoy it so much that you forget the... I remember I had a crush on a girl and to get her, she liked her father, I thought oh, one should be polite to her father, so it was a
unknown
ritual when I came for a date with
ritual when I came for a date with
Slavoj Žižek
her first I talk with her father and so on and so on. Then slowly she got jealous and she exploded and after... you know I was starting to enjoy conversations with her father so much that when she came time to go out uuh, can we for five minutes I'm just finishing this and that and so on. You know... you know this is why, this is the first lesson of object a, cause of desire. How usually what triggers... there is even a technical term called endearing foibles, I think, how you know how you fall in love. Always it's almost a rule, I was told. It holds for me, I don't know, now you will again come with your husband for whom it’s different or whatever. Sorry, sorry. But that, okay you are attracted, sorry from the male chauvinist perspective, by a guy. My God Freudian slip. By a girl, okay okay. But then to fall in love you always had to have the experience of a small failure. They call it endearing foibles. Like you you say oh okay her teeth are not perfect or put whatever you want, want, and then you say but nonetheless I love her. You know what I mean? You think these teeth or whatever it can be is just an obstacle, but it has to be there. Sorry. There's also that similar paradigm in all the kind of Hollywood screwball comedies of the man who is just interested in seducing the woman but then inevitably actually ends up liking her as a person. Yeah but ah here the things get complicated, yeah. Did you read Stanley Cavell? I don't know what's the title of the book, it's wonderful one on he goes even further, comedies of remarriage. Precisely at this level his idea is that to get a proper authentic marriage it must be the second one. Because first you marry because you just like the girl. Then you have to discover the weakness, you divorce, and then you marry again. Well what's that film with Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda where that happens, where they actually have to fall in love with each other twice? First they marry... I forgot which one and for one reason: because I didn't I don't like Barbara Stanwyck. But that's another problem, yeah. You hate her? Hate her is too much, you know. I just... I have problems with stars like Barbara Stanwyck and Katharine Hepburn. No it's much more vulgar and I'm so embarrassed to say it, I don't find them sexually attractive. I'm so vulgar here I'm so sorry, you know. But you know what? Now I will tell you a politically totally incorrect thing, it ended bad for me in United States. Once we were debating this point, you know, people attacked me for not being historicist enough, no? and then challenged me: Okay everything is culturally relative. Tell us one feature which is absolutely universal. No? Oh my God you don't do this what I did in the United States. I said okay, what I know is absolutely universal is: you put a man in front of a woman. It doesn't matter what type of woman, what type of man. Always for the split of the second, the first reaction of man is: would I do it or not with her, you know. And I claim this is absolutely universal. But then a wonderful thing happened in England. They have more sense of fun. A lady told me but we are the same, and you are are you interested in what was my reaction to you? you know. Panic, whatever. No but sorry, okay let's go on. More seriously, uh, let's go back to where we began. Yes. So what does... okay let me just nonetheless conclude with a theoretical point here, object a and melancholy. We said object a—oh my God there is so much, let me go a little bit on serious theory to do here. You know what’s one of the names or versions of object a? You know how if it is authentic love, you refer to what in French they usually call je ne sais quoi, that something in you I don’t know what it is but some x which... and this need not to be only the point of attraction, even with hatred and so on. Which is why when I analyze antisemitism, I always pointed out that if you say Jews are—and let’s make the list of of course dirty antisemitic... Jews are dirty, corrupted, whatever. If you claim this you are not yet a true antisemite. To be a true antisemite you have to turn this around and to say they are corrupted, dirty blah blah because they are Jews. And then you ask but what is this?, and then you say ah it’s that mysterious x, the ingredient in being a Jew and so on. This would be again another version of object a. Uh, how how ah now we can go a little bit more into theory. Because how does this work with... because you asked me this yesterday: subject, master signifier and all them. Let me repeat some old stuff to conclude I’m sorry if you know it, but it makes the link very nice how there is no object a without this as it were imbalance, disorder, structural inconsistency of the symbolic order. Uh, my classic example, sorry if you know it, take the movie Jaws. You saw it, the boring... but maybe not so bad. Spielberg, no my favorite Spielberg is Empire of the Sun, interesting. I like the novel very much. Okay, but go on. Ask yourself a question: what does the figure of the shark stand for? You know that when the movie was out I remember all stupid social theorists like some people claimed it's American racism, the shark stands for ecology, or threat of the Third World immigrant. And then you had opposite readings, like Fidel Castro, interestingly, he liked Jaws, he said it’s clear that the shark is the big capital exploitation.
her first I talk with her father and so on and so on. Then slowly she got jealous and she exploded and after... you know I was starting to enjoy conversations with her father so much that when she came time to go out uuh, can we for five minutes I'm just finishing this and that and so on. You know... you know this is why, this is the first lesson of object a, cause of desire. How usually what triggers... there is even a technical term called endearing foibles, I think, how you know how you fall in love. Always it's almost a rule, I was told. It holds for me, I don't know, now you will again come with your husband for whom it’s different or whatever. Sorry, sorry. But that, okay you are attracted, sorry from the male chauvinist perspective, by a guy. My God Freudian slip. By a girl, okay okay. But then to fall in love you always had to have the experience of a small failure. They call it endearing foibles. Like you you say oh okay her teeth are not perfect or put whatever you want, want, and then you say but nonetheless I love her. You know what I mean? You think these teeth or whatever it can be is just an obstacle, but it has to be there. Sorry. There's also that similar paradigm in all the kind of Hollywood screwball comedies of the man who is just interested in seducing the woman but then inevitably actually ends up liking her as a person. Yeah but ah here the things get complicated, yeah. Did you read Stanley Cavell? I don't know what's the title of the book, it's wonderful one on he goes even further, comedies of remarriage. Precisely at this level his idea is that to get a proper authentic marriage it must be the second one. Because first you marry because you just like the girl. Then you have to discover the weakness, you divorce, and then you marry again. Well what's that film with Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda where that happens, where they actually have to fall in love with each other twice? First they marry... I forgot which one and for one reason: because I didn't I don't like Barbara Stanwyck. But that's another problem, yeah. You hate her? Hate her is too much, you know. I just... I have problems with stars like Barbara Stanwyck and Katharine Hepburn. No it's much more vulgar and I'm so embarrassed to say it, I don't find them sexually attractive. I'm so vulgar here I'm so sorry, you know. But you know what? Now I will tell you a politically totally incorrect thing, it ended bad for me in United States. Once we were debating this point, you know, people attacked me for not being historicist enough, no? and then challenged me: Okay everything is culturally relative. Tell us one feature which is absolutely universal. No? Oh my God you don't do this what I did in the United States. I said okay, what I know is absolutely universal is: you put a man in front of a woman. It doesn't matter what type of woman, what type of man. Always for the split of the second, the first reaction of man is: would I do it or not with her, you know. And I claim this is absolutely universal. But then a wonderful thing happened in England. They have more sense of fun. A lady told me but we are the same, and you are are you interested in what was my reaction to you? you know. Panic, whatever. No but sorry, okay let's go on. More seriously, uh, let's go back to where we began. Yes. So what does... okay let me just nonetheless conclude with a theoretical point here, object a and melancholy. We said object a—oh my God there is so much, let me go a little bit on serious theory to do here. You know what’s one of the names or versions of object a? You know how if it is authentic love, you refer to what in French they usually call je ne sais quoi, that something in you I don’t know what it is but some x which... and this need not to be only the point of attraction, even with hatred and so on. Which is why when I analyze antisemitism, I always pointed out that if you say Jews are—and let’s make the list of of course dirty antisemitic... Jews are dirty, corrupted, whatever. If you claim this you are not yet a true antisemite. To be a true antisemite you have to turn this around and to say they are corrupted, dirty blah blah because they are Jews. And then you ask but what is this?, and then you say ah it’s that mysterious x, the ingredient in being a Jew and so on. This would be again another version of object a. Uh, how how ah now we can go a little bit more into theory. Because how does this work with... because you asked me this yesterday: subject, master signifier and all them. Let me repeat some old stuff to conclude I’m sorry if you know it, but it makes the link very nice how there is no object a without this as it were imbalance, disorder, structural inconsistency of the symbolic order. Uh, my classic example, sorry if you know it, take the movie Jaws. You saw it, the boring... but maybe not so bad. Spielberg, no my favorite Spielberg is Empire of the Sun, interesting. I like the novel very much. Okay, but go on. Ask yourself a question: what does the figure of the shark stand for? You know that when the movie was out I remember all stupid social theorists like some people claimed it's American racism, the shark stands for ecology, or threat of the Third World immigrant. And then you had opposite readings, like Fidel Castro, interestingly, he liked Jaws, he said it’s clear that the shark is the big capital exploitation.
unknown
Okay, what’s my point here? My point is that no, ideology doesn't work like that. It's a wrong question to insist on but what does the shark really stand for?. The point is this one: imagine an everyday person.
Okay, what’s my point here? My point is that no, ideology doesn't work like that. It's a wrong question to insist on but what does the shark really stand for?. The point is this one: imagine an everyday person.
Slavoj Žižek
You are afraid of many inconsistent things, you know? You are afraid of ecological crisis, you are afraid of pain, you are afraid of immigrants, but you are afraid of state, of big capital, banks exploiting you, and you have all these inconsistent fears. And what the figure of the shark does is: it kind of a magically stands in for all these fears. You as it were symbolically, in this sense it is for Lacan an empty
You are afraid of many inconsistent things, you know? You are afraid of ecological crisis, you are afraid of pain, you are afraid of immigrants, but you are afraid of state, of big capital, banks exploiting you, and you have all these inconsistent fears. And what the figure of the shark does is: it kind of a magically stands in for all these fears. You as it were symbolically, in this sense it is for Lacan an empty
unknown
signifier.
signifier.
Slavoj Žižek
Not that it means nothing, but it doesn’t have a content of its own because it really stands for all that inconsistent mess. And I claim that’s my point of course, it's exactly the same for antisemitism. Imagine an ordinary guy in Germany in 1920s. You had many fears, if you were this modern small bourgeois. Uh, you were afraid of bankers, of course, inflation crisis. You were, if you were a moralist, afraid of sexual moral depravity. You were afraid of this on that decay and so on. And then Hitler comes (okay not only Hitler, it was a tradition) and tells you the Jew. And the Jew stands for all of them. A proof: analyze a little bit the figure of the Jew in antisemitism, of course not reality, antisemitic figure. And did you notice the inconsistency of this figure? Jews are at the same time lazy, in the sense of just exploiting us Gentiles, we have to work, but at the same time it’s part of antisemitism this idea: of course Jews win, they are better students because they don’t even know how to properly enjoy, they just study, work all the time. Or Jews are hyper-intellectual, at the same time they are dirty, seducing our girls and all that and so on and so on, you know. So this is a clear case of how antisemitism works. You take all the signifiers of this different things that bother you and you introduce false consistency by this one term which as it were stands for them all. But which is the logic here? Sorry, maybe you know it from my books if I repeat another old joke which I really like from Poland, an anti-communist joke which I love maybe you know it. The joke is that... you know how you have to know this how when communists were in power they liked to boast how socialism is the highest stage of humanity, it’s the synthesis of all the greatest achievements, it's to be evil like Badiou's philosophy for but you you know like, it's the synthesis of all past and so on. So the joke, Polish one, goes on like this: Socialism is the synthesis, bridging together of all the greatest achievements of humanity. From primitive societies it took primitive brutality. From ancient societies socialism took slavery. From medieval societies it took brutal domination. From capitalism it took exploitation and... (now comes the beauty) from socialism it took the name. And it’s exactly the same for antisemitism. You see? For example, from bankers it took (the antisemitic figure of the Jew), from bankers it took this financial speculations, from ordinary drunken people it took this vulgar seduction and so on, whatever, and from the Jews it took the name, no? Uh, which is why incidentally this is my classic line maybe you know it but it's worth repeating, this is how master signifier works. Which is why if you want to debate ideology, precisely antisemitism, but it's the same with other racisms, be aware that the moment you accept debate at the level of reality, in the sense of but are Jews really like that?, you've lost. You shouldn't do this. For example, let's say I debate with a in the 30s in Germany with an antisemitic Nazi member and I tell him but listen, your idea of a Jew is wrong, Jews are not really like that. The moment you do this you've sold your soul to the devil. Why? Because the result will always be somewhere in between. Let's go through it: Jews are seducing our German girls—well I hope they did, some of them definitely did, why not? You know what I mean? Or Jews were exploiting Germans—of course they were, it's a fact, some of them were rich and so on. But that's not the point, you see? It's a totally wrong line. The true question is not are Jews like that?. The true question is: why did the Nazi ideology, why did they need the figure of the Jew to maintain their identity as it were, for their whole universe to function? It’s not the question of reality are they like that?. This... Does that mean that the fascist regime is automatically self-destructive? Which? Fascism? It is self-destructive but everybody knows it. In the sense that if you take away from Nazism the figure of the Jew, it falls apart and so on. Yes, it’s totally dependent on... which is why in this sense Jews are object a for Nazism. Which is why you can empirically verify it. You have this strange logic of: the more the Nazis killed the Jews, the more threatening that remainder was. You know, it's... not real. But what I want to say is that another thing that Lacan showed me the way immediately... sorry, when he said something wonderful. And this is the parallel I want to draw. When he said imagine a jealous husband. Sorry again for male chauvinist twist. Jealous husband who is obsessed with the idea that his wife is screwing around with other men all the time. And Lacan says something... he says even if his suspicions are totally true, his wife is sleeping around with other men all the time, his jealousy is still pathological. Because what makes it pathological is not is it true or not, but again the structural role it plays. Why would the loss of jealousy ruin his entire personal identity and so on and so on? But what I want to say is that when you make this replacement—replacement in the sense of: instead of all this like banker here, lawyer here, Jews were also supposed to be dirty lawyers who cheat you, lawyer here, banker here, rapist here, whatever, avant-garde artist there, and instead of fearing all of them you focus on: behind all of them is the Jew. But here to make it work you need object a. Where? Because then you have to presuppose that x. What are the Jews? We don't know, some mysterious x with which makes them Jews, you know. Sorry, but okay. I have a very nasty question. What you just described, doesn't it sound like Badiou's generic set? Doesn't it? Absolutely, and here you touch a very... Even with the indiscernible, you know, this little x that doesn't... Yeah, yes and no. Again, what I already mentioned, remember, my point is that this would have held for early Badiou where he does claim that he defines event at something which as it were includes its own name, no? But now he changed his his position here. But yes, we debated a lot with Alain here and I... you know what's my problem with... and sorry we don't have time with his generic, he has four how do you call it, generic procedures, whatever, no? Science, art, uh... which is then the... okay, what's the last one? Politics, love. Politics, love, yes. I claim love is his symptomatic point. In the sense that, you know, it's my old joke about Marx, critical of Marx, that Marx has a certain categorization of modes of production, you know: primitive tribal societies, Asiatic mode of production, feudalism, capitalism and then whatever shit will there be socialism whatever. Okay, so but it's clear that Marx is cheating. In what sense? The true set is composed only of tribal primitive societies, slavery, feudalism, capitalism. Then Marx was honest enough to admit that there are some modes of production which don't fit any of these. And he invented Asiatic mode of production, which is it clear any good anthropologist historian knows, Marx threw into that from ancient China to India to Latin, sorry Latin American I mean empires to Egypt. The true meaning of Asiatic mode of production is: all the modes that don't fit the other. You know it's just it's like you remember Michel Foucault (everybody knows this) quotes at the beginning of his Les Mots et les choses, the order of things, that famous Borges' uh qualification of dogs, where one of the elements are brown dogs, dogs owned by the Emperor, these dogs, and then all the dogs which are not included into this list, you know? It’s a kind of a negative container. It appears to be one element in the set, but it’s really a stand-in within the set for what is excluded from
Not that it means nothing, but it doesn’t have a content of its own because it really stands for all that inconsistent mess. And I claim that’s my point of course, it's exactly the same for antisemitism. Imagine an ordinary guy in Germany in 1920s. You had many fears, if you were this modern small bourgeois. Uh, you were afraid of bankers, of course, inflation crisis. You were, if you were a moralist, afraid of sexual moral depravity. You were afraid of this on that decay and so on. And then Hitler comes (okay not only Hitler, it was a tradition) and tells you the Jew. And the Jew stands for all of them. A proof: analyze a little bit the figure of the Jew in antisemitism, of course not reality, antisemitic figure. And did you notice the inconsistency of this figure? Jews are at the same time lazy, in the sense of just exploiting us Gentiles, we have to work, but at the same time it’s part of antisemitism this idea: of course Jews win, they are better students because they don’t even know how to properly enjoy, they just study, work all the time. Or Jews are hyper-intellectual, at the same time they are dirty, seducing our girls and all that and so on and so on, you know. So this is a clear case of how antisemitism works. You take all the signifiers of this different things that bother you and you introduce false consistency by this one term which as it were stands for them all. But which is the logic here? Sorry, maybe you know it from my books if I repeat another old joke which I really like from Poland, an anti-communist joke which I love maybe you know it. The joke is that... you know how you have to know this how when communists were in power they liked to boast how socialism is the highest stage of humanity, it’s the synthesis of all the greatest achievements, it's to be evil like Badiou's philosophy for but you you know like, it's the synthesis of all past and so on. So the joke, Polish one, goes on like this: Socialism is the synthesis, bridging together of all the greatest achievements of humanity. From primitive societies it took primitive brutality. From ancient societies socialism took slavery. From medieval societies it took brutal domination. From capitalism it took exploitation and... (now comes the beauty) from socialism it took the name. And it’s exactly the same for antisemitism. You see? For example, from bankers it took (the antisemitic figure of the Jew), from bankers it took this financial speculations, from ordinary drunken people it took this vulgar seduction and so on, whatever, and from the Jews it took the name, no? Uh, which is why incidentally this is my classic line maybe you know it but it's worth repeating, this is how master signifier works. Which is why if you want to debate ideology, precisely antisemitism, but it's the same with other racisms, be aware that the moment you accept debate at the level of reality, in the sense of but are Jews really like that?, you've lost. You shouldn't do this. For example, let's say I debate with a in the 30s in Germany with an antisemitic Nazi member and I tell him but listen, your idea of a Jew is wrong, Jews are not really like that. The moment you do this you've sold your soul to the devil. Why? Because the result will always be somewhere in between. Let's go through it: Jews are seducing our German girls—well I hope they did, some of them definitely did, why not? You know what I mean? Or Jews were exploiting Germans—of course they were, it's a fact, some of them were rich and so on. But that's not the point, you see? It's a totally wrong line. The true question is not are Jews like that?. The true question is: why did the Nazi ideology, why did they need the figure of the Jew to maintain their identity as it were, for their whole universe to function? It’s not the question of reality are they like that?. This... Does that mean that the fascist regime is automatically self-destructive? Which? Fascism? It is self-destructive but everybody knows it. In the sense that if you take away from Nazism the figure of the Jew, it falls apart and so on. Yes, it’s totally dependent on... which is why in this sense Jews are object a for Nazism. Which is why you can empirically verify it. You have this strange logic of: the more the Nazis killed the Jews, the more threatening that remainder was. You know, it's... not real. But what I want to say is that another thing that Lacan showed me the way immediately... sorry, when he said something wonderful. And this is the parallel I want to draw. When he said imagine a jealous husband. Sorry again for male chauvinist twist. Jealous husband who is obsessed with the idea that his wife is screwing around with other men all the time. And Lacan says something... he says even if his suspicions are totally true, his wife is sleeping around with other men all the time, his jealousy is still pathological. Because what makes it pathological is not is it true or not, but again the structural role it plays. Why would the loss of jealousy ruin his entire personal identity and so on and so on? But what I want to say is that when you make this replacement—replacement in the sense of: instead of all this like banker here, lawyer here, Jews were also supposed to be dirty lawyers who cheat you, lawyer here, banker here, rapist here, whatever, avant-garde artist there, and instead of fearing all of them you focus on: behind all of them is the Jew. But here to make it work you need object a. Where? Because then you have to presuppose that x. What are the Jews? We don't know, some mysterious x with which makes them Jews, you know. Sorry, but okay. I have a very nasty question. What you just described, doesn't it sound like Badiou's generic set? Doesn't it? Absolutely, and here you touch a very... Even with the indiscernible, you know, this little x that doesn't... Yeah, yes and no. Again, what I already mentioned, remember, my point is that this would have held for early Badiou where he does claim that he defines event at something which as it were includes its own name, no? But now he changed his his position here. But yes, we debated a lot with Alain here and I... you know what's my problem with... and sorry we don't have time with his generic, he has four how do you call it, generic procedures, whatever, no? Science, art, uh... which is then the... okay, what's the last one? Politics, love. Politics, love, yes. I claim love is his symptomatic point. In the sense that, you know, it's my old joke about Marx, critical of Marx, that Marx has a certain categorization of modes of production, you know: primitive tribal societies, Asiatic mode of production, feudalism, capitalism and then whatever shit will there be socialism whatever. Okay, so but it's clear that Marx is cheating. In what sense? The true set is composed only of tribal primitive societies, slavery, feudalism, capitalism. Then Marx was honest enough to admit that there are some modes of production which don't fit any of these. And he invented Asiatic mode of production, which is it clear any good anthropologist historian knows, Marx threw into that from ancient China to India to Latin, sorry Latin American I mean empires to Egypt. The true meaning of Asiatic mode of production is: all the modes that don't fit the other. You know it's just it's like you remember Michel Foucault (everybody knows this) quotes at the beginning of his Les Mots et les choses, the order of things, that famous Borges' uh qualification of dogs, where one of the elements are brown dogs, dogs owned by the Emperor, these dogs, and then all the dogs which are not included into this list, you know? It’s a kind of a negative container. It appears to be one element in the set, but it’s really a stand-in within the set for what is excluded from
unknown
the set. And here yes, here is a link with Alain Badiou. Because what he mentions
the set. And here yes, here is a link with Alain Badiou. Because what he mentions
Slavoj Žižek
as this—he also oscillates, sometimes his term is the the
as this—he also oscillates, sometimes his term is the the
unknown
symptomatic knot or, you know, this sur-numerary
symptomatic knot or, you know, this sur-numerary
Slavoj Žižek
element. Element which is an element of a set but without proper place within the set. And uh what what I am saying here, here things are more complex, we can go into it in the afternoon, is that the whole problem is here Badiou is right that this set which is internal to a system but without proper place in the system, that this set stands for universality. And it's a very nice logic which says that precisely the sur-numerary excess stands for universality. And here Badiou here admits he is close to Rancière. The best book by Rancière I think it's still La Mésentente—how did they translate it? Disagreement. Disagreement, yeah yeah. To me this is too gentlemanly like two British guys debate I disagree. Because there he says the same, he has a wonderful... he says that when does democracy begin? Not when in for example in French Revolution, not when the third estate says we also want our role. No. When the third estate says: You, first second estate, noblemen, clergy, you stand only for you, we are the people. Precisely we as those excluded, you see the point? It’s not this liberal inclusion oh we also want our role, it’s a much more arrogant position. They claimed: we stand for universality. But fuck it, the lady will kill me. Let's go on uh in the afternoon, no?
element. Element which is an element of a set but without proper place within the set. And uh what what I am saying here, here things are more complex, we can go into it in the afternoon, is that the whole problem is here Badiou is right that this set which is internal to a system but without proper place in the system, that this set stands for universality. And it's a very nice logic which says that precisely the sur-numerary excess stands for universality. And here Badiou here admits he is close to Rancière. The best book by Rancière I think it's still La Mésentente—how did they translate it? Disagreement. Disagreement, yeah yeah. To me this is too gentlemanly like two British guys debate I disagree. Because there he says the same, he has a wonderful... he says that when does democracy begin? Not when in for example in French Revolution, not when the third estate says we also want our role. No. When the third estate says: You, first second estate, noblemen, clergy, you stand only for you, we are the people. Precisely we as those excluded, you see the point? It’s not this liberal inclusion oh we also want our role, it’s a much more arrogant position. They claimed: we stand for universality. But fuck it, the lady will kill me. Let's go on uh in the afternoon, no?