PANEL 1 THE MICHAEL BROOKS TRIBUTE SERIES: Cornel West & Slavoj Žižek"The Future Of The Left"
Debate · The Michael Brooks Show ·
2020 · 1:29:18 · 12,515 words
ideologycommunism-socialismliberalism-political-correctnessrace-antisemitismdemocracyecology-climatehegel-dialecticspsychoanalysiscinema-art-culturecapitalismfascism-populismrevolution-violence
A tribute roundtable discussion for Michael Brooks, hosted by Russell Sbriglia with Slavoj Žižek and Cornel West, recorded after Brooks' sudden death in July 2020. The conversation spans the future of the left, the failure of neoliberalism, the pandemic as political opportunity, and the relationship between universality and particularity in race, art, and politics. Žižek and West debate concepts of hope, dialectical 'perhaps,' concrete universality, and what authentic leftist politics requires in the Trump era and beyond.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 14
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Žižek's label for a surface-level, self-serving deployment of anti-racist language that does not address deeper structural roots and can actually reinforce prejudices through condescension.
as “abstract universality”
The false universalism that erases concrete particularity; Žižek uses 'All Lives Matter' as the paradigm case, it sounds universal but in practice privileges the dominant (white upper-middle-class) perspective.
Žižek argues that true universality is reached not by abstracting from particularity but by going deeper into a specific situation, e.g., Black Lives Matter is a truly universal claim precisely because it names the concrete particular form that racism takes in the US today.
as “moral majority (reclaimed)”
Žižek provocatively proposes reclaiming Richard Nixon's phrase: figures like Bernie Sanders and AOC are the 'true moral majority' insofar as they stand for ordinary honesty and decency against the obscenity of right-wing populism.
Žižek's term for the unexpected emergence of elementary decency and solidarity, as in health workers who risk their lives for minimal pay citing Kantian duty, that transcends mere survivalist or market logic.
as “neoliberalism's strong state”
Žižek argues that the term 'neoliberalism' is misleading because it obscures the degree to which advanced capitalism requires an ever-stronger state apparatus, the state is not shrinking but expanding.
Žižek and West both invoke Beckett's formulation from Worstward Ho as the appropriate disposition for the left, not defeatism but a commitment to trying again with accumulated understanding of past failures.
as “ideological perhaps”
The false hope embedded in American ideology, 'you are in deep shit now, but perhaps tomorrow you will get lucky and become a millionaire', which keeps the existing system running without challenging its coordinates.
as “future vs. avenir”
Drawing on Derrida and French linguistics, Žižek distinguishes 'future' (conformist, predictable extrapolation of the present) from 'avenir' (what is truly to come, radically open and unexpected).
as “dialectical perhaps”
A more genuine political hope that includes what might have happened but didn't, e.g., the welfare state was sustained because capitalism feared communism might spread; even a losing left constitutes a real 'perhaps' that pressures the system.
A Chilean protest slogan Žižek adopts: instead of defending the old normal, the left should embrace the end of the existing world-order while fighting for a different post-catastrophe world.
as “technocratic trap”
The ideological move of depoliticizing a crisis by framing it as purely technical or medical, suppressing the question of which political future will replace the old normal.
Žižek invokes Walter Benjamin's concept to argue that the pandemic moment of apparent political stasis is actually when the new world is secretly forming beneath the surface.
Implicitly invoked through references to how people project rationality and moral coherence onto the political system when in fact that coherence does not exist.
Stories he reaches for 4
The 1805 Haitian Constitution declared that all citizens, regardless of skin color, are 'black', Žižek uses this as his paradigm of concrete universality: instead of making whiteness the unmarked universal norm, it names the dominated particular as the universal standpoint.
“All people of Haiti, all citizens, independently of the color of their skin, are black.”
Žižek notes that Anders Breivik's manifesto defended Israel as a 'bastion protecting the West' while simultaneously arguing that Jews should all move to Israel, illustrating the structural connection between pro-Israel far-right politics and classical anti-Semitism.
“He defends Israel, 'Israel the bastion protecting the West.' But he says, 'But in the West, no Jews. They should move to Israel to protect us there.'”
Žižek invokes Bolivia under Morales and Linera as an example of democratic socialism that actually worked, raising living standards without ruining the economy, and argues it was precisely this success (not totalitarianism) that necessitated the 2019 coup.
“They demonstrated how it can work. A socialism which is democratic, which doesn't ruin the economy. They were the most dangerous.”
Žižek reports a slogan from the 2019 Chilean uprising: 'Another end of the world is possible', not defending the old normal but accepting that this world is ending while fighting for a different post-catastrophic world.
“Another end of the world is possible.”
Works invoked 10
Žižek's own earlier book, mentioned by Cornel West, whose central thesis, learning to act dangerously and courageously through accepting hopelessness, runs through the entire discussion.
Beloved book
Žižek recommends Morrison's novel as his go-to example of subjectivity for Western students, the deepest account of what becoming a free subject actually costs.
Finnegans Wake book
Žižek explicitly says he dislikes Finnegans Wake, 'too pretentious, it's playing endlessly', preferring Beckett's minimalism.
Mentioned (by a speaker attributed to West/unknown) as Dostoevsky's underground man, anticipating stream of consciousness as developed by Tolstoy in The Meek One.
West invokes Marx's 'first tragedy, second farce' dictum in the context of Trump; Žižek adds (following Marcuse) that farce can sometimes be worse than the first tragedy.
Examined Life film
Astra Taylor's documentary in which both Žižek and West appeared (in different segments), mentioned by the moderator as context for their prior relationship.
Žižek's own book, published with Or Books, which he briefly mentions covers COVID as both catastrophe and 'perhaps,' and warns against the technocratic trap.
Worstward Ho book
Žižek invokes Beckett's late novella and its 'fail better' formulation as the appropriate leftist disposition toward political defeat and the need to keep trying.
A Doll's House play
West invokes Ibsen's call for miracles in A Doll's House as an image of transformative sensitivity, which Žižek connects to his notion of ethical miracles.
The Great Gatsby book
Invoked by West (in the discussion Žižek participates in) as the paradigm of American ideology's false 'perhaps', Gatsby's belief in the green light, the conformist future.
People invoked 31
Alenka Zupančič positive
Mentioned as one of Žižek's Slovenian troika alongside Mladen Dolar, co-organizer of the 'Fail Better' university event.
Jacques Derrida positive
Žižek cites Derrida's distinction between 'future' and 'avenir' (democracy to come) to illustrate the difference between conformist and radical-open conceptions of the future.
West cites Lenin's 'learn, learn, learn' dictum in the context of the need for serious critical thinking in crisis, attributed to Žižek's book.
G. K. Chesterton positive
Žižek cites Chesterton's observation that Christ hid his mirth and comic spirit, using it to argue against joyless political correctness.
Francis Fukuyama negative
Žižek argues that even the left that dismisses Fukuyama's 'end of history' thesis nonetheless acts as Fukuyamans, stuck in a paucity of imagination about alternatives. Interestingly notes Fukuyama has since shifted to supporting Bernie Sanders.
Donald Trump negative
Žižek analyzes Trump as a symptom of neoliberal failure, notes his obscene right-wing populism, his links to Orbán, and his offer of a 'barbaric future' (letting hundreds of thousands die to keep life going).
Giorgio Agamben negative
Žižek rejects Agamben's position (implicitly invoked through 'people like Agamben') that pandemic governance reduces us to survivalist bare-life machines, arguing that health workers demonstrate the opposite.
Andrei Platonov positive
Žižek names Platonov (above even Chekhov) as his preferred Russian author, a leftist who developed an immanent critique of Bolshevism's deadlocks while remaining on the side of the revolution.
Fredric Jameson positive
Žižek repeats Jameson's famous line that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, treating it as a key diagnostic of contemporary ideological imagination.
Žižek credits Latour's insight that the pandemic is a dress rehearsal for coming crises, while noting he doesn't agree with Latour on most other things.
Bernie Sanders positive
Žižek frames Sanders as the exemplary democratic socialist, one of the 'true moral majority,' and emphasizes that his modest social democratic platform was treated as Venezuelanism, illustrating the failure of political imagination.
Samuel Beckett positive
Žižek strongly prefers Beckett to Joyce; praises him as a minimalist hero who did not collaborate under the French occupation (unlike Sartre), and invokes his 'fail better' formulation.
Mladen Dolar positive
Mentioned as one of Žižek's Slovenian troika alongside Alenka Zupančič, who co-organized the 'Fail Better' event at Ljubljana university.
Evo Morales positive
Žižek cites Bolivia under Morales as proof that democratic socialism can work economically, and the 2019 coup as proof that its success was precisely what made it dangerous to the ruling class.
Anders Behring Breivik negative
Žižek cites Breivik's manuscript defending Israel while demanding no Jews in the West as the paradigm case of far-right philo-Semitism that is structurally anti-Semitic.
Žižek says he disagrees with Rushdie politically and not even as a writer ('I wouldn't sell my mother into slavery for him'), but cites his point about Jane Austen and Dickens as his Indian roots as a useful illustration of concrete universality.
Bill Gates negative
Žižek places Gates as offering a 'technocratic future' in response to COVID, one of the alternatives the left must fight against along with Trump's barbaric future.
Charles Dickens positive
Žižek invokes Dickens as a model of universal particularity, recognizable across radically different cultures and conditions (both Tolstoy and Rushdie's formative influence).
Viktor Orbán negative
Žižek cites a Hungarian cultural figure connected to Orbán comparing George Soros to Hitler, calling it the most vulgar anti-Semitism, and links Orbán to Trump's international connections.
Žižek (via Cornel West attributing the quote to him) invokes the Maoist phrase 'everything under heaven is in chaos, the situation is excellent' as a frame for the current crisis.
Walter Benjamin positive
Žižek invokes Benjamin's concept of 'dialectic in standstill' to argue the pandemic stasis is actually the moment of secret political formation.
Søren Kierkegaard positive
Žižek invokes a Kierkegaardian (without Christian underlay) 'perhaps' as deeper than both the American and the dialectical perhaps, and cites Kierkegaard's reading of Christ as a comic figure.
Žižek says he has problems with Joyce, finds Finnegans Wake too pretentious and self-reflexively arrogant, though he acknowledges Beckett is unthinkable without Joyce.
William Shakespeare positive
Žižek invokes Shakespeare as the paradigm case of universality through particularity, universal precisely because he emerged from a very specific historical situation.
Cornel West positive
Žižek and West engage in sustained intellectual riffing, repeatedly affirming each other's points. Žižek calls him 'brother Cornel' throughout and frames the dialogue as a jazz trio.
Toni Morrison positive
Žižek recommends Beloved as the concrete example of subjectivity he gives to students, calling it the deepest insight into what becoming a free subject requires.
Leo Tolstoy positive
Žižek defends Tolstoy against dismissal as a 'boring' social realist, arguing he had an incredibly modern theory of language and his keeping of Dickens' portrait illustrates the universality-through-particularity thesis.
Barack Obama negative
Žižek, following West, argues Obama's neoliberal legacy (Wall Street reconstruction, escalating inequality, drone assassinations without due process) was a precondition of Trump's rise, and his phone calls unified the Democratic establishment against Bernie.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Žižek invokes Hegel's concept of concrete universality and the distinction between abstract and concrete universality to analyze Black Lives Matter and the Haitian Revolution.
Immanuel Kant positive
Žižek reads health workers' statements about duty ('I cannot not do it') as spontaneous Kantian ethics, and calls their actions 'ethical miracles' in a Kantian sense.
Michael Brooks positive
Žižek praises Brooks as an authentic leftist free of opportunist political correctness, an authentic anti-racist who understood Hegelian particularity/universality, and recalls debating him on Black Lives Matter. The discussion is a tribute following Brooks' sudden death.
What it argues
concrete universality vs. abstract universalitythe left's response to neoliberal failure and Trumpismthe pandemic as political and philosophical ruptureauthentic leftism vs. opportunist political correctnessthe dialectical 'perhaps' and hope through hopelessnesstribute to Michael Brooks and the vocation of the intellectualanti-Semitism, Palestine, and the universality of anti-racism
Dialectical moves 8
“Black Lives Matter is the truly universal claim, while 'All Lives Matter' is really a particular claim.”
The inversion shows that abstract universality ('all') conceals a concrete particular perspective, whereas the specific ('black') names the structural form through which universality of racism must be approached in this historical moment.
“The more you are concrete, the more you are universal.”
Against liberal abstraction, Žižek argues that true universality is only achieved through full immersion in singular particularity, exemplified by Shakespeare, Dickens, Toni Morrison.
“'Anybody but Trump' was a mask for 'anybody but Bernie' — the true content was the opposite of the stated content.”
The centrist Democrats' avowedly anti-fascist electoral strategy was in reality primarily a strategy to suppress the democratic socialist threat from within their own party.
“To confront hopelessness should bring us hope.”
The standard dialectical move of Courage of Hopelessness: genuine hope does not deny catastrophe but emerges from the full acceptance of it.
“Even if the left loses, it was perceived as a danger — a perhaps — and that pressure itself changes things.”
Defeat is not simply defeat: a threatening left forces concessions (the welfare state emerged partly because capitalism feared communism), so even losing constitutes a form of real political efficacy.
“The world as we knew it is coming to an end — and that's the hopelessness, but confronting this hopelessness should bring us hope.”
Rather than defending the old normal, the left should accept the end of the existing world and fight for a different post-catastrophic world, 'another end of the world is possible.'
“Those who genuinely support Israel against Palestinians can be the most virulent anti-Semites.”
The apparent paradox reveals a structural logic: far-right support for Israel as a 'bastion of the West' coexists with and even requires anti-Semitic expulsion of Jews from the West itself.
“The pandemic forces states to do what radical leftists preach — far from being a catastrophe for socialist arguments, it is their empirical confirmation.”
The emergency measures (de facto universal income, socialized healthcare, vaccine egalitarianism) show that the 'impossible' left program is in fact perfectly realizable when conditions demand it.
Claims 17
asserts
Black Lives Matter is a truly universal claim while 'All Lives Matter' is actually a particular (white, upper-middle-class) claim — the concrete particular is the route to genuine universality.Black Lives Matter / concrete universality
asserts
The Haitian Revolution — not the French Revolution — was the true world-historical event of the late 18th century, giving the French Declaration its truly universal scope.Haitian Revolution / concrete universality
asserts
The response to Trump was inadequate because the left and liberals refused to honestly interrogate Obama's neoliberal legacy as a precondition of Trump's rise.Obama, neoliberalism, and the origins of Trumpism
asserts
The Democratic Party's 'anybody but Trump' slogan was ideologically a mask for 'anybody but Bernie' — the real target was democratic socialism, not just Trumpist fascism.Democratic Party centrist strategy / Bernie Sanders
asserts
The pandemic is not merely a medical crisis but an economic, political, and ecological one — and COVID would not have spread globally outside of global capitalism.COVID-19 / capitalism / ecology
asserts
Far from undermining the case for socialism, the pandemic demonstrated it: states were forced to introduce de facto universal income, socialize healthcare spending, and coordinate globally — doing exactly what radical leftists have long demanded.pandemic and socialism
asserts
Fascist and far-right supporters of Israel can simultaneously be deeply anti-Semitic — supporting Israel against Palestinians is entirely compatible with, and often coexists with, classic anti-Semitism.anti-Semitism / Israel / Palestine
asserts
Fighting anti-Semitism and fighting for Palestinian rights are the same struggle — accepting the forced choice between the two is selling out to a false ideological dilemma.anti-Semitism / Palestinian solidarity
asserts
The left should target impoverished working-class voters who went to Trump rather than courting the center — Trump showed that moving to the extremes wins, and the left should make the equivalent move.left electoral strategy
reframes
The term 'neoliberalism' is misleading insofar as it implies a retreating state; in reality contemporary capitalism requires an ever more interventionist state.neoliberalism / state power
asserts
The pandemic moment that appears politically frozen is in fact a 'dialectic in standstill' — the new world is secretly forming beneath the surface and now is the time for left activism.pandemic politics / Benjamin / revolutionary moment
asserts
Universality in art and thought does not come from erasing one's roots but from going the deepest into one's singular situation — the most rooted is also the most universal.universality / particularity / culture
asserts
Orbán's Hungary exemplifies the deep link between professed support for Israel and classical anti-Semitism — a Hungarian cultural figure compared George Soros to Hitler while officially being a pro-Israeli nationalist.right-wing anti-Semitism / Hungary / Orbán
asserts
Bolivia under Morales/Linera proved that democratic socialism can work economically without ruining the economy — that is precisely why a coup was mounted against them.Bolivia / democratic socialism / coup
asserts
The pandemic is a dress rehearsal for a whole series of ecological and civilizational crises that are coming, as Bruno Latour argued.COVID / ecology / future crises
rejects
Health workers who risk their lives for low pay enact an ethical miracle — a genuinely Kantian sense of duty — that refutes the claim that pandemic conditions reduce us to mere survivalist machines.Giorgio Agamben's claim that pandemic reduces people to bare life / survivalism
rejects
The true universality of authentic leftism requires retaining the comic spirit and intellectual joy — political correctness that prohibits humor represents a degraded, joyless pseudo-leftism.political correctness / comic spirit
Quotes 14
“Black Lives Matter is a truly universal claim, in the sense that it covers all racism, while 'All Lives Matter' is really a particular claim.”Slavoj Žižek · concrete universality / Black Lives Matter
“The more you are concrete, the more you are universal.”Slavoj Žižek · concrete universality
“Fighting anti-Semitism must move you to protect Palestinians today. It's the same struggle.”Slavoj Žižek · anti-Semitism / Palestinian solidarity as unified struggle
“The moment you accept this as a choice — Palestinians or Israelis — you sold your soul to the devil.”Slavoj Žižek · false dilemma / Israel-Palestine
“It's easier for us to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine not just the end of capitalism but even a relatively modest change in the mode of production.”Slavoj Žižek · failure of political imagination / Jameson
“I am doing it because I cannot look in my face if I would not have been doing it. I cannot not do it.”Slavoj Žižek · ethical miracle / Kantian duty in the pandemic
“To confront this hopelessness should bring us hope.”Slavoj Žižek · courage of hopelessness / dialectical hope
“'Anybody but Trump' was a mask for the true content which was 'anybody but Bernie.'”Slavoj Žižek · Democratic Party strategy / centrist vs. left
“I am not saying that COVID is one step towards communism, I am not crazy. I am just saying it's a perhaps.”Slavoj Žižek · pandemic as political opening / cautious optimism
“Trump made the move to the extremes for the right side. We should make it for the left.”Slavoj Žižek · left electoral strategy / anti-centrism
“The pandemic is just a dress rehearsal for a whole series of crises which are coming.”Slavoj Žižek · ecological crisis / pandemic as rehearsal
“We have to accept that the world as we knew it is coming to an end. That's the hopelessness, but to confront this hopelessness should bring us hope.”Slavoj Žižek · courage of hopelessness / end of old world
“The situation is excellent — everything under heaven is in chaos.”Slavoj Žižek · Mao / crisis as opportunity
“United States are a big first-world rogue state, you know? This is kind of a sobering moment.”Slavoj Žižek · American exceptionalism debunked / Trump era
Transcript 98 turns
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Hello everybody and welcome. I’m Russell Sbriglia, assistant professor of English at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. I want to begin by saying that as much as I’m sure everyone watching this is excited for the discussion we’re about to have, we all do so with a heavy heart for the loss of our dear friend and comrade Michael Brooks, who passed away very suddenly this past July at the far too young age of This is just the first of many round table discussions on various topics regarding the left and leftist politics that we’re planning to air in honor of Michael over the next couple of weeks, or next handful of weeks, and the round tables are going to feature a number of familiar faces that viewers and listeners of The Michael Brooks Show will be well familiar with, so keep your eyes peeled for notices about those. So if you’re watching this, then chances are that you not only know our two guests today but that you’ve also probably seen the interviews that Michael did with them on TMBS. Joining me now for a discussion about the future of the left, and considering that the mantra of TMBS was "left is best," I can’t think of a more fitting topic with which to begin this tribute to Michael. Joining me are Cornel West and Slavoj Žižek. And it’s my hope that we honor Michael this evening not only by remembering him, which of course we will do some of that, but also carrying on the work that he was so fervently committed to and so fervently believed in. So we don’t really need introductions but I’ll do some brief ones. Dr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University, as well as Class of University Professor Emeritus at Princeton. I also wanted to mention, because I’ve been enjoying it, that with Trisha Rose he co-hosts the recently launched podcast The Tight Rope, which I’ve been watching on YouTube. Slavoj Žižek is Senior Researcher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana in his home country of Slovenia, which is where he’s joining us from today. He’s also International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, as well as Professor of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. You know, we were talking a little bit about this before we started, but I know so the two of you appeared together, albeit in different segments, in Astra Taylor’s Examined Life, which was but then I know that the two of you maybe two or three years before that, or were on a panel together at Princeton. I think Slavoj gave a talk and Cornel, you responded. That is true. Yeah, we met once. I don’t know where, but we met. Yeah, I think we were at the New School briefly, but it's always a blessing to be with brother Žižek. And you know what I remember, Cornel? In these times of serious troubles we tend to forget the real important things, that in at Harvard, Cambridge, but that we debated Schelling, all those problems at Princeton. It was a wonderful debate because you know, we both of us spontaneously reject this most stupid idea of, "now we have real problems, forget about philosophy." Now it’s the time for philosophy. And I wonder, Cornel, if you agree. Look, I saw some report on CNN, I don’t know where, a guy, white older man from Texas, protested against wearing a mask and he says, "I am not a dog, I don’t want to walk around in a muzzle." But you see, crisis like this one forces even everyday people to think a little bit, even if wrongly, like philosophers. Like
Hello everybody and welcome. I’m Russell Sbriglia, assistant professor of English at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. I want to begin by saying that as much as I’m sure everyone watching this is excited for the discussion we’re about to have, we all do so with a heavy heart for the loss of our dear friend and comrade Michael Brooks, who passed away very suddenly this past July at the far too young age of This is just the first of many round table discussions on various topics regarding the left and leftist politics that we’re planning to air in honor of Michael over the next couple of weeks, or next handful of weeks, and the round tables are going to feature a number of familiar faces that viewers and listeners of The Michael Brooks Show will be well familiar with, so keep your eyes peeled for notices about those. So if you’re watching this, then chances are that you not only know our two guests today but that you’ve also probably seen the interviews that Michael did with them on TMBS. Joining me now for a discussion about the future of the left, and considering that the mantra of TMBS was "left is best," I can’t think of a more fitting topic with which to begin this tribute to Michael. Joining me are Cornel West and Slavoj Žižek. And it’s my hope that we honor Michael this evening not only by remembering him, which of course we will do some of that, but also carrying on the work that he was so fervently committed to and so fervently believed in. So we don’t really need introductions but I’ll do some brief ones. Dr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University, as well as Class of University Professor Emeritus at Princeton. I also wanted to mention, because I’ve been enjoying it, that with Trisha Rose he co-hosts the recently launched podcast The Tight Rope, which I’ve been watching on YouTube. Slavoj Žižek is Senior Researcher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana in his home country of Slovenia, which is where he’s joining us from today. He’s also International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, as well as Professor of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. You know, we were talking a little bit about this before we started, but I know so the two of you appeared together, albeit in different segments, in Astra Taylor’s Examined Life, which was but then I know that the two of you maybe two or three years before that, or were on a panel together at Princeton. I think Slavoj gave a talk and Cornel, you responded. That is true. Yeah, we met once. I don’t know where, but we met. Yeah, I think we were at the New School briefly, but it's always a blessing to be with brother Žižek. And you know what I remember, Cornel? In these times of serious troubles we tend to forget the real important things, that in at Harvard, Cambridge, but that we debated Schelling, all those problems at Princeton. It was a wonderful debate because you know, we both of us spontaneously reject this most stupid idea of, "now we have real problems, forget about philosophy." Now it’s the time for philosophy. And I wonder, Cornel, if you agree. Look, I saw some report on CNN, I don’t know where, a guy, white older man from Texas, protested against wearing a mask and he says, "I am not a dog, I don’t want to walk around in a muzzle." But you see, crisis like this one forces even everyday people to think a little bit, even if wrongly, like philosophers. Like
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he is basically asking himself, "what do I mean by my
he is basically asking himself, "what do I mean by my
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freedom and dignity?" And for him, wrongly, but it’s a serious effort, to keep social distancing, to wear a mask in public, means that in his spontaneous philosophy, this violates his sense of human dignity. That’s
freedom and dignity?" And for him, wrongly, but it’s a serious effort, to keep social distancing, to wear a mask in public, means that in his spontaneous philosophy, this violates his sense of human dignity. That’s
Slavoj Žižek
why I always claim today more than ever, it’s not just a medical crisis, just an economic crisis, it’s time for real thinking. Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, it reminds me actually of our dear brother Michael Jamal Brooks, the son of Donna and Glenn. Oh, they did such a wonderful, wonderful job on that brother because he understood this is the moment for serious critical thinking, for serious philosophical engagement. That's what you talked about in your wonderful book Courage of Hopelessness, learning how to act dangerously and courageously. The learn, learn, learn that Lenin talked about after when he went to Switzerland. Or that wonderful phrase you have in your text, brother Žižek, from Mao that says, "Everything under the sun is under the heaven, is just chaotic. The situation is excellent." That’s a moment of possibility, that’s a moment of serious reflection but always a reflection that has to do with the underlying assumptions of, in this case, the decline and fall of the American empire, the relative collapse of the neoliberal predatory capitalist civilization as we know it and what kinds of alternatives we can try to project in terms of vision, in terms of organization, in
why I always claim today more than ever, it’s not just a medical crisis, just an economic crisis, it’s time for real thinking. Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, it reminds me actually of our dear brother Michael Jamal Brooks, the son of Donna and Glenn. Oh, they did such a wonderful, wonderful job on that brother because he understood this is the moment for serious critical thinking, for serious philosophical engagement. That's what you talked about in your wonderful book Courage of Hopelessness, learning how to act dangerously and courageously. The learn, learn, learn that Lenin talked about after when he went to Switzerland. Or that wonderful phrase you have in your text, brother Žižek, from Mao that says, "Everything under the sun is under the heaven, is just chaotic. The situation is excellent." That’s a moment of possibility, that’s a moment of serious reflection but always a reflection that has to do with the underlying assumptions of, in this case, the decline and fall of the American empire, the relative collapse of the neoliberal predatory capitalist civilization as we know it and what kinds of alternatives we can try to project in terms of vision, in terms of organization, in
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terms of execution. But what I also loved about brother Michael Brooks was that he had what Kafka, he had what Chekhov, he had what Beckett had. He had a deep sense of the comic, he had a deep sense of incongruity. And of course, brother Žižek has that. It’s hard for him to philosophize and not give some kind of allusion to a film or a philosophical text that shows the incongruities. It gets us to smile and grin in order to fortify ourselves intellectually, morally, and like brother Michael Brooks given his Buddhist sensibility, his spirit, his soul. So that we began to always acknowledge the way in which the economic, the predatory capitalist, is hand-in-hand with the existential. That the spiritual goes hand-in-hand with the social. And of course our feminist sisters and womanist sisters have taught us the personal goes hand-in-hand with the political. But in the end, it’s not going to be a matter of identity, in the end it’s going to be a matter of intellectual integrity and solidarity in which class struggle has to be a fundamental lens through which we view the world as we come to terms with our various identities. And if all we talk about is identity, then that’s going to get mobilized into a class politics. And we have to mention Adolf Reed Jr., because there's really no Michael Brooks Show without Adolf Reed Jr. I've seen his interviews with Adolf, you know, many, many times, and he has taught us the centrality of class struggle, as has Žižek, as has Fred Jameson and some of the other important leftists. I know another important guy. Do you know him? Cornel West, who also taught us some of these things. Okay, we can ignore that guy, he is not so great, but just to remind you. You're very kind. That, I mean, so that when you mentioned Adolf Reed there, there’s a clip, I’ll cut it and I’ll send it to both of you, but one of the last episodes of TMBS that Michael filmed before he passed, it’s a great like one-minute clip, and he specifically talking about his three intellectual heroes and his like bucket list interviewees and it’s the two of you and Adolf Reed. And I was so, I mean, very glad that he was able to connect with the three of you. I mean, I wish he was here to be doing this right now because he’s the person who should be, you know,
terms of execution. But what I also loved about brother Michael Brooks was that he had what Kafka, he had what Chekhov, he had what Beckett had. He had a deep sense of the comic, he had a deep sense of incongruity. And of course, brother Žižek has that. It’s hard for him to philosophize and not give some kind of allusion to a film or a philosophical text that shows the incongruities. It gets us to smile and grin in order to fortify ourselves intellectually, morally, and like brother Michael Brooks given his Buddhist sensibility, his spirit, his soul. So that we began to always acknowledge the way in which the economic, the predatory capitalist, is hand-in-hand with the existential. That the spiritual goes hand-in-hand with the social. And of course our feminist sisters and womanist sisters have taught us the personal goes hand-in-hand with the political. But in the end, it’s not going to be a matter of identity, in the end it’s going to be a matter of intellectual integrity and solidarity in which class struggle has to be a fundamental lens through which we view the world as we come to terms with our various identities. And if all we talk about is identity, then that’s going to get mobilized into a class politics. And we have to mention Adolf Reed Jr., because there's really no Michael Brooks Show without Adolf Reed Jr. I've seen his interviews with Adolf, you know, many, many times, and he has taught us the centrality of class struggle, as has Žižek, as has Fred Jameson and some of the other important leftists. I know another important guy. Do you know him? Cornel West, who also taught us some of these things. Okay, we can ignore that guy, he is not so great, but just to remind you. You're very kind. That, I mean, so that when you mentioned Adolf Reed there, there’s a clip, I’ll cut it and I’ll send it to both of you, but one of the last episodes of TMBS that Michael filmed before he passed, it’s a great like one-minute clip, and he specifically talking about his three intellectual heroes and his like bucket list interviewees and it’s the two of you and Adolf Reed. And I was so, I mean, very glad that he was able to connect with the three of you. I mean, I wish he was here to be doing this right now because he’s the person who should be, you know,
unknown
moderating this, but I know— Well no, no, we’re glad to have you, brother Russell. We are blessed to have you working on Melville and Lacan. Melville, the greatest literary artist in the history of the American empire, coming to terms with the empire and white supremacy and class. Rooted in the best of the West, critical of the worst of the West, so we’re glad to have you as well, though, brother. But it’s true that brother Michael, you know, he was a genuine intellectual, he was a genuine human being, and he had so much love in him, so much love in him. Well, that’s what I wanted to ask the two of you. I wanted, you know, it was more than just, you know, interviewing the two of you. I mean, it was clear that you were developing a personal, like, intimacy for him. Brother West, like you, before Michael interviewed you in April, the two of you were on a panel in Harvard in, I think it was late January, it was part of a conference with the student group Harvard for Bernie. And I saw the video, I saw the pictures. And then Slavoj,
moderating this, but I know— Well no, no, we’re glad to have you, brother Russell. We are blessed to have you working on Melville and Lacan. Melville, the greatest literary artist in the history of the American empire, coming to terms with the empire and white supremacy and class. Rooted in the best of the West, critical of the worst of the West, so we’re glad to have you as well, though, brother. But it’s true that brother Michael, you know, he was a genuine intellectual, he was a genuine human being, and he had so much love in him, so much love in him. Well, that’s what I wanted to ask the two of you. I wanted, you know, it was more than just, you know, interviewing the two of you. I mean, it was clear that you were developing a personal, like, intimacy for him. Brother West, like you, before Michael interviewed you in April, the two of you were on a panel in Harvard in, I think it was late January, it was part of a conference with the student group Harvard for Bernie. And I saw the video, I saw the pictures. And then Slavoj,
Slavoj Žižek
Michael, he first interviewed you last October and then before the pandemic came and canceled everything, we had arranged,
Michael, he first interviewed you last October and then before the pandemic came and canceled everything, we had arranged,
unknown
you know,
you know,
Slavoj Žižek
you
you
unknown
were going to come to New York and be on TMBS in studio. Michael was really going to take you up on that offer to go for matzo ball soup with him at Katz’s in Brooklyn. But even though you couldn’t come, he ended up, you were on, he interviewed you again I think in late April remotely. So you know, as a leftist thinker and commentator and advocate, it’s easy to see why and how really, if you read Michael’s work and watch his interviews, you know, how he was influenced by both of your work and why he gravitated toward you both. But you know, I wanted to just flip things around a little bit here and ask, you know, what attracted you toward
were going to come to New York and be on TMBS in studio. Michael was really going to take you up on that offer to go for matzo ball soup with him at Katz’s in Brooklyn. But even though you couldn’t come, he ended up, you were on, he interviewed you again I think in late April remotely. So you know, as a leftist thinker and commentator and advocate, it’s easy to see why and how really, if you read Michael’s work and watch his interviews, you know, how he was influenced by both of your work and why he gravitated toward you both. But you know, I wanted to just flip things around a little bit here and ask, you know, what attracted you toward
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Michael, whether it was on the show, some of his texts? You know, I just wanted to get your thoughts. Slavoj, why don't you start. Okay, okay, very briefly. I want to connect also to what Cornel already said. First, okay, this may alienate some of the viewers, but what I admired in Michael is that he was an authentic leftist. What was totally absent in him was what I called with some so-called politically correct people, this opportunist side of political correctness, you know, without seeing the deeper roots and so on. Quite
Michael, whether it was on the show, some of his texts? You know, I just wanted to get your thoughts. Slavoj, why don't you start. Okay, okay, very briefly. I want to connect also to what Cornel already said. First, okay, this may alienate some of the viewers, but what I admired in Michael is that he was an authentic leftist. What was totally absent in him was what I called with some so-called politically correct people, this opportunist side of political correctness, you know, without seeing the deeper roots and so on. Quite
unknown
often political correctness can work in a way which reinforces certain prejudices and so on and so forth. I have many brothers, black friends, who are very sensitive to this. They very intelligently perceive patronizing, condescending attitude in obeying politically correct rules and so on and so forth. And he was an authentic anti-racist. Let me give you a proof, so I don't take too much time. The last time I spoke of him about preparing, I don't know even if this entered then the talk with Michael, was we had a short spontaneous Hegelian debate about how particularity and universality relate. And we, I proposed the example and he loved it, I hope sincerely, of that, you know this elementary reproach to Black Lives Matter of white supremacists: "But why only Black Lives Matter? Do not All Lives Matter?" You know? No. Because in every concrete situation, yes, all lives matter abstractly. But in every concrete situation, there is a certain form of racism which, as it were, colors all the others, which is typical for that epoch. And I will be very fair here. In the same way that in Germany of 1930s-1945, you cannot talk about
often political correctness can work in a way which reinforces certain prejudices and so on and so forth. I have many brothers, black friends, who are very sensitive to this. They very intelligently perceive patronizing, condescending attitude in obeying politically correct rules and so on and so forth. And he was an authentic anti-racist. Let me give you a proof, so I don't take too much time. The last time I spoke of him about preparing, I don't know even if this entered then the talk with Michael, was we had a short spontaneous Hegelian debate about how particularity and universality relate. And we, I proposed the example and he loved it, I hope sincerely, of that, you know this elementary reproach to Black Lives Matter of white supremacists: "But why only Black Lives Matter? Do not All Lives Matter?" You know? No. Because in every concrete situation, yes, all lives matter abstractly. But in every concrete situation, there is a certain form of racism which, as it were, colors all the others, which is typical for that epoch. And I will be very fair here. In the same way that in Germany of 1930s-1945, you cannot talk about
Slavoj Žižek
racism without mentioning anti-Semitism. In the same way that today in Israel, you cannot talk about racism without mentioning the Palestinians. In United States for a long time, any general talk about racism without seeing that the blacks are the type, they they are what Hegel called concrete universality. You can gain access to universality of racism today in the United States precisely by focusing as a starting point on the racism against black. And now comes my Hegelian paradox. That's why Black Lives Matter is a truly universal claim, in the sense that it covers all racism, while that’s a beautiful paradox, "All Lives Matter" is really a particular claim. Because in the concrete situation, it privileges certain values, white upper-middle class and so on, through which we then locate perceive racism and so on and so forth. That’s why, in my bad taste humor, I cannot restrain myself from ending my third favored version of this lives matter. I found it in Australia, but I think it’s now known around the world, it’s a poster of Stalin holding some kind of a plate on which it says "No Lives Matter," you know? But in a way, not in the way Stalin would have meant it. People like Agamben say, "Oh, today we are just survivalist machines, we are losing our dignity and so on." No! For all those thousands today of nurses, social workers and so on, who fight to save lives, they are not survivalist machines. They are consciously saying, "Ultimately I have my duty to do. My life matters less to me than my duty." So it’s not true that today in the pandemic, if we try to save people’s lives, that we are turning into survivalist machines, just objects of science and so on and so forth. Everybody talks like just about this aspect. But no, there are maybe even millions of cases of wonderful solidarity. In my country, Slovenia, thousands of health workers are risking their lives, they are underpaid and so on. And my god, you get from them a beautiful Kantian, referring to Immanuel Kant, statements like they ask them, "But you're risking your life for a misery, why are you doing it?" They say, "I am doing it because I cannot look in my face if I would not have been doing it. I cannot not do it." You know? You also discover what I cannot but call ethical miracles today. How people discover this elementary decency. And that’s why, I wonder, Cornel, if you would agree. When we were young, we were playing those games, obscenity, you do this, whatever to those in power. But now with Trump and so on, those which were in power, and right-wing populists, they are quite obscene enough. Maybe we the left should also insist a little bit and maybe even risk to use this much-abused term, we know put in circulation, I think, by Richard Nixon. Sorry, but people like Bernie Sanders, AOC and so on, they are the true moral majority, my god. They stand for ordinary honesty, decency and so on. The new right is today obscene. They are doing just breathtaking things. You know, you know what happened, maybe Americans should know this, because Trump tried to establish good contacts with Viktor Orbán. You know what a big from Orbán's Hungary cultural figure did two days ago in a public statement, op-ed? He said that George Soros owns the biggest gas chamber in Europe, that he is worse than Hitler, that his, his, he is spreading a cyanide-like poison which is called multicultural tolerance, and in this sense he is today’s Hitler, he says this, more dangerous than Hitler. This is, and now people who accuse sometimes even me of anti-Semitism, I tell them, sorry, this is anti-Semitism. This is the most vulgar abuse, and I just wonder how often people who, you know, protect Israel when it’s doing bad things attacking the Palestinians, can be very anti-Semitic here. For example, you remember, Cornel, that guy, crazy guy who a couple of years ago killed dozens in a social democratic camp, Breivik, the crazy Norwegian guy? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Friends sent me his diaries, manuscripts, some of them translated. You know what’s so interesting? There he defends Israel, "Israel the bastion protecting the West." But he says, "But in the West, no Jews. They should move to Israel to protect us there." That is to say, it’s this deep link between protecting Israel there, supporting Israel against the Palestinians, and remaining anti-Semitic here. And I claim Trump was also doing this, in a more refined way, but sometimes, you know, you agree, Cornel, when friends tell me, "But you have to choose, Palestinians or Israelis." I say no, the moment you accept this as a choice, you sold your soul to the devil. This must be the same struggle. Fighting anti-Semitism must move you to protect Palestinians today. It’s the same struggle. Absolutely, absolutely. No, I’m resonating deeply with you, my brother. But I love your notion of an ethical miracle. I love that though. It reminds me a little bit— It’s a real miracle when it happens. I mean, you know, James Baldwin used to say all of us are walking disasters and walking miracles at the same time. And of course, Ibsen calls for miracles in "A Doll’s House," calling for the transformation of some kind of sensitivity, shattering the indifference, shattering the callousness. And that’s what I saw in brother Michael Jamal Brooks. When we first met, I said to myself, he’s a fellow blues man, he’s a fellow jazz man, he’s, he’s got a soulfulness about him. And that soulfulness is not just the sharing of a soothing sweetness against the backdrop of a sensitivity to catastrophe, but it’s also Socratic, it’s deeply self-critical. He’s willing to be, he musters the courage to scrutinize himself. That’s where his sense of the comic comes from, that he doesn't take himself so seriously that he can’t also open himself up to the ways in which he has been shaped by some of the very things he’s critical of. That’s what it is to be a human being at the deepest level. But he’s profoundly prophetic, and by prophetic it just means what the great Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel says, the shattering of the evil of indifference. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. And so it’s not just the self-righteousness which we see so deeply inscribed in neoliberal discourse. That's why when it comes to, when it comes to our brothers and sisters on the West Bank and Gaza, that it’s hard for so many of our neoliberal folk to take seriously their plight and predicament because they talk about freedom and liberties but they don’t want to come to terms with the degree to which they’re complicit with a particular understanding of how they view the Middle East and therefore all they can see is our precious Jewish brothers and sisters, our precious Israeli brothers and sisters. And if you get locked into the either-or that brother Žižek is calling into question, and you recognize we just want moral integrity, we just want truth-telling, we just want keeping track of structures of domination no matter what. So that it’s very clear, to take somebody like Thomas Friedman, he just wrote a piece yesterday of when he talked about the killing of the brother in Iran. Didn’t say a word morally, didn’t say a word ethically. Even Brennan, who's been a sponsor of terrorism from the US empire, called it a criminal act. Will you see that language used in the New York Times in relation to this act? Not at all. So you say, so we say, well wait a minute, everybody knows if there was a Palestinian occupation and domination of Jewish brothers and sisters, it would be a different reaction. But there’s an Israeli occupation of Palestinian brothers and sisters. Silence. So you see not just the inconsistency but the cowardice, the refusal to follow through on serious truth-telling. And Adorno says something like "The condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak." And the suffering is not just of your group, your tribe, your gender, your sexual
racism without mentioning anti-Semitism. In the same way that today in Israel, you cannot talk about racism without mentioning the Palestinians. In United States for a long time, any general talk about racism without seeing that the blacks are the type, they they are what Hegel called concrete universality. You can gain access to universality of racism today in the United States precisely by focusing as a starting point on the racism against black. And now comes my Hegelian paradox. That's why Black Lives Matter is a truly universal claim, in the sense that it covers all racism, while that’s a beautiful paradox, "All Lives Matter" is really a particular claim. Because in the concrete situation, it privileges certain values, white upper-middle class and so on, through which we then locate perceive racism and so on and so forth. That’s why, in my bad taste humor, I cannot restrain myself from ending my third favored version of this lives matter. I found it in Australia, but I think it’s now known around the world, it’s a poster of Stalin holding some kind of a plate on which it says "No Lives Matter," you know? But in a way, not in the way Stalin would have meant it. People like Agamben say, "Oh, today we are just survivalist machines, we are losing our dignity and so on." No! For all those thousands today of nurses, social workers and so on, who fight to save lives, they are not survivalist machines. They are consciously saying, "Ultimately I have my duty to do. My life matters less to me than my duty." So it’s not true that today in the pandemic, if we try to save people’s lives, that we are turning into survivalist machines, just objects of science and so on and so forth. Everybody talks like just about this aspect. But no, there are maybe even millions of cases of wonderful solidarity. In my country, Slovenia, thousands of health workers are risking their lives, they are underpaid and so on. And my god, you get from them a beautiful Kantian, referring to Immanuel Kant, statements like they ask them, "But you're risking your life for a misery, why are you doing it?" They say, "I am doing it because I cannot look in my face if I would not have been doing it. I cannot not do it." You know? You also discover what I cannot but call ethical miracles today. How people discover this elementary decency. And that’s why, I wonder, Cornel, if you would agree. When we were young, we were playing those games, obscenity, you do this, whatever to those in power. But now with Trump and so on, those which were in power, and right-wing populists, they are quite obscene enough. Maybe we the left should also insist a little bit and maybe even risk to use this much-abused term, we know put in circulation, I think, by Richard Nixon. Sorry, but people like Bernie Sanders, AOC and so on, they are the true moral majority, my god. They stand for ordinary honesty, decency and so on. The new right is today obscene. They are doing just breathtaking things. You know, you know what happened, maybe Americans should know this, because Trump tried to establish good contacts with Viktor Orbán. You know what a big from Orbán's Hungary cultural figure did two days ago in a public statement, op-ed? He said that George Soros owns the biggest gas chamber in Europe, that he is worse than Hitler, that his, his, he is spreading a cyanide-like poison which is called multicultural tolerance, and in this sense he is today’s Hitler, he says this, more dangerous than Hitler. This is, and now people who accuse sometimes even me of anti-Semitism, I tell them, sorry, this is anti-Semitism. This is the most vulgar abuse, and I just wonder how often people who, you know, protect Israel when it’s doing bad things attacking the Palestinians, can be very anti-Semitic here. For example, you remember, Cornel, that guy, crazy guy who a couple of years ago killed dozens in a social democratic camp, Breivik, the crazy Norwegian guy? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Friends sent me his diaries, manuscripts, some of them translated. You know what’s so interesting? There he defends Israel, "Israel the bastion protecting the West." But he says, "But in the West, no Jews. They should move to Israel to protect us there." That is to say, it’s this deep link between protecting Israel there, supporting Israel against the Palestinians, and remaining anti-Semitic here. And I claim Trump was also doing this, in a more refined way, but sometimes, you know, you agree, Cornel, when friends tell me, "But you have to choose, Palestinians or Israelis." I say no, the moment you accept this as a choice, you sold your soul to the devil. This must be the same struggle. Fighting anti-Semitism must move you to protect Palestinians today. It’s the same struggle. Absolutely, absolutely. No, I’m resonating deeply with you, my brother. But I love your notion of an ethical miracle. I love that though. It reminds me a little bit— It’s a real miracle when it happens. I mean, you know, James Baldwin used to say all of us are walking disasters and walking miracles at the same time. And of course, Ibsen calls for miracles in "A Doll’s House," calling for the transformation of some kind of sensitivity, shattering the indifference, shattering the callousness. And that’s what I saw in brother Michael Jamal Brooks. When we first met, I said to myself, he’s a fellow blues man, he’s a fellow jazz man, he’s, he’s got a soulfulness about him. And that soulfulness is not just the sharing of a soothing sweetness against the backdrop of a sensitivity to catastrophe, but it’s also Socratic, it’s deeply self-critical. He’s willing to be, he musters the courage to scrutinize himself. That’s where his sense of the comic comes from, that he doesn't take himself so seriously that he can’t also open himself up to the ways in which he has been shaped by some of the very things he’s critical of. That’s what it is to be a human being at the deepest level. But he’s profoundly prophetic, and by prophetic it just means what the great Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel says, the shattering of the evil of indifference. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. And so it’s not just the self-righteousness which we see so deeply inscribed in neoliberal discourse. That's why when it comes to, when it comes to our brothers and sisters on the West Bank and Gaza, that it’s hard for so many of our neoliberal folk to take seriously their plight and predicament because they talk about freedom and liberties but they don’t want to come to terms with the degree to which they’re complicit with a particular understanding of how they view the Middle East and therefore all they can see is our precious Jewish brothers and sisters, our precious Israeli brothers and sisters. And if you get locked into the either-or that brother Žižek is calling into question, and you recognize we just want moral integrity, we just want truth-telling, we just want keeping track of structures of domination no matter what. So that it’s very clear, to take somebody like Thomas Friedman, he just wrote a piece yesterday of when he talked about the killing of the brother in Iran. Didn’t say a word morally, didn’t say a word ethically. Even Brennan, who's been a sponsor of terrorism from the US empire, called it a criminal act. Will you see that language used in the New York Times in relation to this act? Not at all. So you say, so we say, well wait a minute, everybody knows if there was a Palestinian occupation and domination of Jewish brothers and sisters, it would be a different reaction. But there’s an Israeli occupation of Palestinian brothers and sisters. Silence. So you see not just the inconsistency but the cowardice, the refusal to follow through on serious truth-telling. And Adorno says something like "The condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak." And the suffering is not just of your group, your tribe, your gender, your sexual
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orientation, your nation. It’s got to be global, human, international. And that’s precisely why the best of
orientation, your nation. It’s got to be global, human, international. And that’s precisely why the best of
Slavoj Žižek
what brother Michael Brooks saw when he read the
what brother Michael Brooks saw when he read the
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best of Marx, that’s what he saw when he read the best of Du Bois, that’s what he saw when he read the best of Simone de Beauvoir and so forth. That's what he saw when he read Žižek. He says, here’s somebody who’s willing to be over against. Now in my Christian language, I would put it as, Žižek is willing to be in the world but not of it. And the "in the world" is the connection to the truth and the justice. I learned this in my black church on the chocolate side of Sacramento. If the Kingdom of God is within you, then everywhere you go you ought to leave a little heaven behind. Well what kind of Socratic heaven are you leaving behind? What kind of ethical heaven are you leaving behind? Dostoevsky defined hell as those who suffer from the incapacity to love, like Hamlet. I deeply agree with you, which is why, you know, some theologian, I forgot which one, said something maybe you will know, absolutely Meister Eckhart, the great mystic. Oh, the great mystic. Yes, yes, yes. He said, I would rather be with Christ in hell than without Christ in heaven. That's it. Because Jesus is where hell is, to be with those. That’s exactly right. And then Dostoevsky says, Dostoevsky says, you remember it’s in Joseph Frank’s great two-volume biography of Dostoevsky, Dostoevsky says, if Christ were on one side and reality was on the other, I would choose Christ because I go, I want the truth, I want unarmed truth, I want unconditional love, and that leads me to bear witness in a certain kind of way. And therefore, it’s a similar kind of fork in the road. But what does that require? Oh, see we right back here again now. We right back here again now: the courage of hopelessness. But the hopelessness— Cornel, isn’t there a danger here that we don’t show publicly pornography? Be careful. No, but seriously, Cornel, can I make another connection to this with the problem of how in some politically correct circles it’s fashionable to claim old white men dismiss European inheritance? No. What you mentioned examples, and I want to return to them, of how one of the great things that black revolutionaries and thinkers did is that they were critical towards white legacy but reappropriating it and they were more, in this way, more faithful to white legacy than white thinkers themselves. That’s why for me the greatest event is not of the early 19th century, late 18th, it’s not French Revolution, it’s Haiti Revolution. Only at the end, without Haiti, French Revolution would have been a matter of, it wouldn’t have been world event as it is. It only became through Haiti. And here, one has to be honest, Jacobins immediately admitted it, as you know with Napoleon it’s a different story. So when people ask me what do you mean by concrete universality, I like to give them another example. You know when they in Haiti when they wrote the
best of Marx, that’s what he saw when he read the best of Du Bois, that’s what he saw when he read the best of Simone de Beauvoir and so forth. That's what he saw when he read Žižek. He says, here’s somebody who’s willing to be over against. Now in my Christian language, I would put it as, Žižek is willing to be in the world but not of it. And the "in the world" is the connection to the truth and the justice. I learned this in my black church on the chocolate side of Sacramento. If the Kingdom of God is within you, then everywhere you go you ought to leave a little heaven behind. Well what kind of Socratic heaven are you leaving behind? What kind of ethical heaven are you leaving behind? Dostoevsky defined hell as those who suffer from the incapacity to love, like Hamlet. I deeply agree with you, which is why, you know, some theologian, I forgot which one, said something maybe you will know, absolutely Meister Eckhart, the great mystic. Oh, the great mystic. Yes, yes, yes. He said, I would rather be with Christ in hell than without Christ in heaven. That's it. Because Jesus is where hell is, to be with those. That’s exactly right. And then Dostoevsky says, Dostoevsky says, you remember it’s in Joseph Frank’s great two-volume biography of Dostoevsky, Dostoevsky says, if Christ were on one side and reality was on the other, I would choose Christ because I go, I want the truth, I want unarmed truth, I want unconditional love, and that leads me to bear witness in a certain kind of way. And therefore, it’s a similar kind of fork in the road. But what does that require? Oh, see we right back here again now. We right back here again now: the courage of hopelessness. But the hopelessness— Cornel, isn’t there a danger here that we don’t show publicly pornography? Be careful. No, but seriously, Cornel, can I make another connection to this with the problem of how in some politically correct circles it’s fashionable to claim old white men dismiss European inheritance? No. What you mentioned examples, and I want to return to them, of how one of the great things that black revolutionaries and thinkers did is that they were critical towards white legacy but reappropriating it and they were more, in this way, more faithful to white legacy than white thinkers themselves. That’s why for me the greatest event is not of the early 19th century, late 18th, it’s not French Revolution, it’s Haiti Revolution. Only at the end, without Haiti, French Revolution would have been a matter of, it wouldn’t have been world event as it is. It only became through Haiti. And here, one has to be honest, Jacobins immediately admitted it, as you know with Napoleon it’s a different story. So when people ask me what do you mean by concrete universality, I like to give them another example. You know when they in Haiti when they wrote the
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constitution, accepted it on I think in You know how they define citizenship of Haiti? And I think it’s a deep truth in it. They say, it says article four of the constitution: "All people of Haiti, all citizens, independently of the color of their skin, are black." You know in what sense this is. In our countries here, the model is white, white. If you are black and you are admitted into corporate society, it’s always the silent presupposition, "Yes, because you are really civilized, one of us," and so on and so forth. You know? Absolutely, absolutely. Absolutely. But today you know, for me though, brother Žižek, for me it’s really the jazz musicians, it’s the blues musicians, it’s people what they were able to do was to be deeply rooted in their own specific and distinctive traditions, but because they were tied to what Greeks call *areté*, of excellence, of the highest level of virtuosity, the highest level of virtue, they could hear a Stravinsky, they could hear a Shostakovich, they could hear a Beethoven, they could hear a Mozart, they could hear a Louis Armstrong, they could hear a Sarah Vaughan, they could hear a Billie Holiday, and say, I am trying to wrestle with death, dread, despair, domination, and try to be a certain kind of human being in my short trek from my mama’s womb to tomb. That’s the *Giambattista*
constitution, accepted it on I think in You know how they define citizenship of Haiti? And I think it’s a deep truth in it. They say, it says article four of the constitution: "All people of Haiti, all citizens, independently of the color of their skin, are black." You know in what sense this is. In our countries here, the model is white, white. If you are black and you are admitted into corporate society, it’s always the silent presupposition, "Yes, because you are really civilized, one of us," and so on and so forth. You know? Absolutely, absolutely. Absolutely. But today you know, for me though, brother Žižek, for me it’s really the jazz musicians, it’s the blues musicians, it’s people what they were able to do was to be deeply rooted in their own specific and distinctive traditions, but because they were tied to what Greeks call *areté*, of excellence, of the highest level of virtuosity, the highest level of virtue, they could hear a Stravinsky, they could hear a Shostakovich, they could hear a Beethoven, they could hear a Mozart, they could hear a Louis Armstrong, they could hear a Sarah Vaughan, they could hear a Billie Holiday, and say, I am trying to wrestle with death, dread, despair, domination, and try to be a certain kind of human being in my short trek from my mama’s womb to tomb. That’s the *Giambattista*
Slavoj Žižek
of Vico. That’s what it is to be human. How are you going to deal with this pilgrimage in the short time that you are here as a quest for excellence? And therefore any talk about obsession with whiteness or brownness or yellowness, what kind of excellence? What kind of courage? What kind of vision? What kind of willingness to tell the truth did they enact? If Shelley telling
of Vico. That’s what it is to be human. How are you going to deal with this pilgrimage in the short time that you are here as a quest for excellence? And therefore any talk about obsession with whiteness or brownness or yellowness, what kind of excellence? What kind of courage? What kind of vision? What kind of willingness to tell the truth did they enact? If Shelley telling
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the truth in his poetry, you go with Percy. Percy got something to say. If they're from Turkey—and of course we should note the connection of Michael Brooks to Turkey now. He spent some time in Ankara though. He already was connected to Nazım Hikmet and all the other traditional, of traditions of what the Turks themselves who have been cast as "other." Same with true with Muslims, same with true with Arabs, same with true with Dalits, same with true with Roma, same is true with poor white workers, same is true with indigenous peoples. He had an all-embracing internationalism
the truth in his poetry, you go with Percy. Percy got something to say. If they're from Turkey—and of course we should note the connection of Michael Brooks to Turkey now. He spent some time in Ankara though. He already was connected to Nazım Hikmet and all the other traditional, of traditions of what the Turks themselves who have been cast as "other." Same with true with Muslims, same with true with Arabs, same with true with Dalits, same with true with Roma, same is true with poor white workers, same is true with indigenous peoples. He had an all-embracing internationalism
Slavoj Žižek
grounded in his particularity. That is what John Coltrane’s "Love Supreme" is all about. No, I deeply agree with you, and if you will agree, I will give you another example. You made a very important point here, because when I also advocate universalism, but in art, in thinking, universalism does not come with let’s erase my roots, let’s just think abstractly. Only in going the deepest into your singular situation. For example, a big white example, William Shakespeare. He is universal but precisely because he comes from a very specific situation. He was possible only in that time and so on. So the, but there is universality in him. And let me give you, I will be brief with it, how this being rooted in a particular situation opens up to universality. I spoke with his, to be open too, a little bit too liberal for me, I don't agree with him politically, not even as a writer, but he made one nice point, Salman Rushdie. Politically, I wouldn’t sell my mother into slavery for him if I may put it in my terms. But at a debate where I was with him, he was asked, "didn’t you betray your nationhood? You come from India, but you totally forgot about your Indian roots." And you know what he said? He said, "Sorry, but two great Indian writers were the deepest influence on me: Jane Austen and Charles Dickens." Because the upper-middle classes in India where I grew up, this was Jane Austen, this impoverished nobility and so on. Or he said, "When I saw poor people in the suburbs of Bombay, this is Dickens’ Oliver Twist." So you know, this is true universality. That in somebody like Dickens, you can recognize again your own specific situation. That's why for me, in my worst, in my worst Western, Western European even orientation, when students ask me, "Okay, you talk a lot about subjectivity, but give me an example, concrete, that we can understand." I say, Toni Morrison, *Beloved*. That’s the deep insight into
grounded in his particularity. That is what John Coltrane’s "Love Supreme" is all about. No, I deeply agree with you, and if you will agree, I will give you another example. You made a very important point here, because when I also advocate universalism, but in art, in thinking, universalism does not come with let’s erase my roots, let’s just think abstractly. Only in going the deepest into your singular situation. For example, a big white example, William Shakespeare. He is universal but precisely because he comes from a very specific situation. He was possible only in that time and so on. So the, but there is universality in him. And let me give you, I will be brief with it, how this being rooted in a particular situation opens up to universality. I spoke with his, to be open too, a little bit too liberal for me, I don't agree with him politically, not even as a writer, but he made one nice point, Salman Rushdie. Politically, I wouldn’t sell my mother into slavery for him if I may put it in my terms. But at a debate where I was with him, he was asked, "didn’t you betray your nationhood? You come from India, but you totally forgot about your Indian roots." And you know what he said? He said, "Sorry, but two great Indian writers were the deepest influence on me: Jane Austen and Charles Dickens." Because the upper-middle classes in India where I grew up, this was Jane Austen, this impoverished nobility and so on. Or he said, "When I saw poor people in the suburbs of Bombay, this is Dickens’ Oliver Twist." So you know, this is true universality. That in somebody like Dickens, you can recognize again your own specific situation. That's why for me, in my worst, in my worst Western, Western European even orientation, when students ask me, "Okay, you talk a lot about subjectivity, but give me an example, concrete, that we can understand." I say, Toni Morrison, *Beloved*. That’s the deep insight into
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what sacrifices you have to go through to really become a free subject, to acquire free
what sacrifices you have to go through to really become a free subject, to acquire free
Slavoj Žižek
subject. So that's the paradox of true universality. The more you are concrete, the more you are universal. But that is precisely why the greatest novelist in the history of modern times, Leo Tolstoy, had a picture of Charles Dickens on his wall. And you know, tell me
subject. So that's the paradox of true universality. The more you are concrete, the more you are universal. But that is precisely why the greatest novelist in the history of modern times, Leo Tolstoy, had a picture of Charles Dickens on his wall. And you know, tell me
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let me tell you why. Because it was big fashion when I was young to say, "Well Tolstoy boring, no, it’s Dostoevsky." No, don’t underestimate Tolstoy. Tolstoy had a wonderful, incredibly modern theory of language, which is like this today’s theories of memes self-replicating viruses and so on. He is incredibly modern, so we agree here. I don’t underestimate Tolstoy. And you know Tolstoy with follow the underground man of *Notes from Underground*. years later in *The Meek One*, sometimes translated "A Gentle Creature," you find that same underground man and for the first time you get sustained stream of consciousness like Proust, like Joyce, like Virginia Woolf already enacted in Tolstoy. And he’s supposed to be this regular social realist concerned with depicting... no, no, no, no, no, way. But the same would be true of Toni Morrison. She writes the MA thesis on who? William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf. And she would say there is no Toni Morrison in all of her blackness and Americanness and Western Hemisphericity without her connection to that Southerner Faulkner and Márquez from Colombia, the country of Colombia, and Virginia Woolf, that genius from the British Empire and all of her complexity. This is, but I can, can I just ask Cornel something very briefly, so that we finish this literary topic. Here maybe we will have, so that we don’t just agree, a small conflict. I agree with all your names, but you didn’t mention, and I would support you here, frankly. I am absolutely for Beckett, but I have problems with Joyce. Joyce got so much in this pretentious, arrogant self-reflexivity. I don’t like *Finnegans Wake*, it’s too pretentious, it’s playing endlessly. Beckett is the great guy. Beckett was the real hero under occupation of France. You know, Beckett did not play this game like Sartre, you know, from. There he is. There’s our brother. But remember now, Beckett is a minimalist and Joyce is a maximalist, but there is no Beckett without Joyce. That first-grade essay on Vico, that first-grade essay on literary criticism is
let me tell you why. Because it was big fashion when I was young to say, "Well Tolstoy boring, no, it’s Dostoevsky." No, don’t underestimate Tolstoy. Tolstoy had a wonderful, incredibly modern theory of language, which is like this today’s theories of memes self-replicating viruses and so on. He is incredibly modern, so we agree here. I don’t underestimate Tolstoy. And you know Tolstoy with follow the underground man of *Notes from Underground*. years later in *The Meek One*, sometimes translated "A Gentle Creature," you find that same underground man and for the first time you get sustained stream of consciousness like Proust, like Joyce, like Virginia Woolf already enacted in Tolstoy. And he’s supposed to be this regular social realist concerned with depicting... no, no, no, no, no, way. But the same would be true of Toni Morrison. She writes the MA thesis on who? William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf. And she would say there is no Toni Morrison in all of her blackness and Americanness and Western Hemisphericity without her connection to that Southerner Faulkner and Márquez from Colombia, the country of Colombia, and Virginia Woolf, that genius from the British Empire and all of her complexity. This is, but I can, can I just ask Cornel something very briefly, so that we finish this literary topic. Here maybe we will have, so that we don’t just agree, a small conflict. I agree with all your names, but you didn’t mention, and I would support you here, frankly. I am absolutely for Beckett, but I have problems with Joyce. Joyce got so much in this pretentious, arrogant self-reflexivity. I don’t like *Finnegans Wake*, it’s too pretentious, it’s playing endlessly. Beckett is the great guy. Beckett was the real hero under occupation of France. You know, Beckett did not play this game like Sartre, you know, from. There he is. There’s our brother. But remember now, Beckett is a minimalist and Joyce is a maximalist, but there is no Beckett without Joyce. That first-grade essay on Vico, that first-grade essay on literary criticism is
Slavoj Žižek
under the influence of Joyce. So they go hand-in-hand, but I prefer Beckett, but I prefer Chekhov even more than Beckett, my brother. I don’t know where you go on this. Ah, you know whom I prefer of Russian authors. He developed an, although he was left, an imminent critique of the deadlock of the Bolshevik project but he was on their side, Platonov. Do you know Andrei Platonov? Oh I do, yes I do, yes I do. He is the great one. He is the great one, yeah. Well, listen, since we mentioned Beckett, this is a good transition, actually, because both of you often invoke the famous line from Beckett’s late novella *Worstward Ho*: "Try again, fail again, fail better." Slavoj, I was with you in Ljubljana last August of it was the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the university, and the title of the week-long event that you and the two others who comprise your Slovenian troika, our friends Mladen Dolar and Alenka Zupančič, held, that was titled "Fail Better." And then, you know, Dr. West, the most recent instance I’ve seen of you invoking this line was, I think it was the interview that you did with Anderson Cooper right after the video of the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests. And more specifically, you know, you invoked that line with regard to, you know, as you put it, "witnessing of America as a failed social experiment," especially when it comes to the nation’s black citizens, right? And but you also invoked, I went back and listened, you also invoked Beckett when you spoke with Michael in April and you noted that Beckett’s favorite word was "perhaps." So this brings me to my question. So even though Joe Biden defeated Trump, and you know, we should all be thankful for that—and you know, as you’ve said, Brother West, that it’s imperative we defeat the neofascist catastrophe that is Trump in order that we can then defeat the neoliberal disaster that is Joe Biden—but even though Biden ultimately defeated Trump, it was still obviously a blow to the left and I would say to the country that Bernie Sanders lost the Democratic nomination to a representative of the same old tired milk-toast neoliberalism, the failures of which, as you have both spoken to before, are in large part what brought us Trump to begin with. And yet, you know, to invoke Beckett,
under the influence of Joyce. So they go hand-in-hand, but I prefer Beckett, but I prefer Chekhov even more than Beckett, my brother. I don’t know where you go on this. Ah, you know whom I prefer of Russian authors. He developed an, although he was left, an imminent critique of the deadlock of the Bolshevik project but he was on their side, Platonov. Do you know Andrei Platonov? Oh I do, yes I do, yes I do. He is the great one. He is the great one, yeah. Well, listen, since we mentioned Beckett, this is a good transition, actually, because both of you often invoke the famous line from Beckett’s late novella *Worstward Ho*: "Try again, fail again, fail better." Slavoj, I was with you in Ljubljana last August of it was the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the university, and the title of the week-long event that you and the two others who comprise your Slovenian troika, our friends Mladen Dolar and Alenka Zupančič, held, that was titled "Fail Better." And then, you know, Dr. West, the most recent instance I’ve seen of you invoking this line was, I think it was the interview that you did with Anderson Cooper right after the video of the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests. And more specifically, you know, you invoked that line with regard to, you know, as you put it, "witnessing of America as a failed social experiment," especially when it comes to the nation’s black citizens, right? And but you also invoked, I went back and listened, you also invoked Beckett when you spoke with Michael in April and you noted that Beckett’s favorite word was "perhaps." So this brings me to my question. So even though Joe Biden defeated Trump, and you know, we should all be thankful for that—and you know, as you’ve said, Brother West, that it’s imperative we defeat the neofascist catastrophe that is Trump in order that we can then defeat the neoliberal disaster that is Joe Biden—but even though Biden ultimately defeated Trump, it was still obviously a blow to the left and I would say to the country that Bernie Sanders lost the Democratic nomination to a representative of the same old tired milk-toast neoliberalism, the failures of which, as you have both spoken to before, are in large part what brought us Trump to begin with. And yet, you know, to invoke Beckett,
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one could perhaps argue that the left did fail better this time around than we did in So I guess I want to ask both of you if you think that’s true, that even though we tried again, failed again, that we did
one could perhaps argue that the left did fail better this time around than we did in So I guess I want to ask both of you if you think that’s true, that even though we tried again, failed again, that we did
Slavoj Žižek
fail better, why or why not that’s the case, and then a follow-up: how might we fail better next time, or is failing better our only option? So I put that question to both of you. You want to jump in, brother Žižek? Please go, go on. I tell, please go on, brother Cornel. But warning, this is a joke. I will never say to the other guy, brother Russell. No, he is not my brother. Let's move on. He is just a middleman between us, serving us coffee and so on. Am I your neighbor? Am I your neighbor, is that what I am? The neighbor? You are not my neighbor. Okay, let's move
fail better, why or why not that’s the case, and then a follow-up: how might we fail better next time, or is failing better our only option? So I put that question to both of you. You want to jump in, brother Žižek? Please go, go on. I tell, please go on, brother Cornel. But warning, this is a joke. I will never say to the other guy, brother Russell. No, he is not my brother. Let's move on. He is just a middleman between us, serving us coffee and so on. Am I your neighbor? Am I your neighbor, is that what I am? The neighbor? You are not my neighbor. Okay, let's move
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on. No, but you know, I would say yes and no. It’s like Paul Celan, you know, you gotta speak yes and speak no. The yes would be that we did for the moment hold off the fascism, but it’s like what E.H. Carr said about the Tories, you know, he said, "the rot is still there, it just now proceeds more slowly." So the rot is still in the Biden-Harris administration tied to Wall Street, Pentagon, militarism, tied to the white
on. No, but you know, I would say yes and no. It’s like Paul Celan, you know, you gotta speak yes and speak no. The yes would be that we did for the moment hold off the fascism, but it’s like what E.H. Carr said about the Tories, you know, he said, "the rot is still there, it just now proceeds more slowly." So the rot is still in the Biden-Harris administration tied to Wall Street, Pentagon, militarism, tied to the white
Slavoj Žižek
supremacist
supremacist
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order, patriarchal order and so forth. But the no is this, brother, that one of the reasons why we have not been able to come to terms with
order, patriarchal order and so forth. But the no is this, brother, that one of the reasons why we have not been able to come to terms with
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Trump is because we haven’t been honest in terms of what actually produced him. And we haven’t been honest in terms of what actually produced him because Barack Obama still has a halo over him and people don’t want to seriously interrogate his role as the face, head of the
Trump is because we haven’t been honest in terms of what actually produced him. And we haven’t been honest in terms of what actually produced him because Barack Obama still has a halo over him and people don’t want to seriously interrogate his role as the face, head of the
Slavoj Žižek
empire. They don’t want to interrogate his role as the facilitator of not just Wall Street reconstruction but Wall Street greed and the intensification of the inequality, the intensification of the poverty. The Black Lives Matter movement taking place under a black President, black Attorney General, and black Homeland Security Cabinet Secretary. That’s when it started, under that official black power with a neoliberal order that cannot deliver protection for poor and working-class
empire. They don’t want to interrogate his role as the facilitator of not just Wall Street reconstruction but Wall Street greed and the intensification of the inequality, the intensification of the poverty. The Black Lives Matter movement taking place under a black President, black Attorney General, and black Homeland Security Cabinet Secretary. That’s when it started, under that official black power with a neoliberal order that cannot deliver protection for poor and working-class
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black folk—I’m not
black folk—I’m not
Slavoj Žižek
talking about the black bourgeoisie now, I’m talking about the black poor and working folk. Or a President who can assassinate American citizens with no due process and the New York Times, the Washington
talking about the black bourgeoisie now, I’m talking about the black poor and working folk. Or a President who can assassinate American citizens with no due process and the New York Times, the Washington
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Post, none of the pundits, none of the critics, none of the liberal writers can say a mumbling word for the most part. You got David Bromwich and Chris Hedges and brother Paul Street and Glen Ford and Ajamu Baraka and others who are willing, but generally speaking. So that what happens now is there’s a sense of which if we go to sleep again the second time, it’s first time tragedy, second time farce. This is "18th Brumaire" Marx, right? But as Marcuse said, as you know, farce can be
Post, none of the pundits, none of the critics, none of the liberal writers can say a mumbling word for the most part. You got David Bromwich and Chris Hedges and brother Paul Street and Glen Ford and Ajamu Baraka and others who are willing, but generally speaking. So that what happens now is there’s a sense of which if we go to sleep again the second time, it’s first time tragedy, second time farce. This is "18th Brumaire" Marx, right? But as Marcuse said, as you know, farce can be
Slavoj Žižek
sometimes worse than the first tragedy. That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. But the other side of this is, you’ve got after three and a half years of this American-style neofascist orientation, almost of white
sometimes worse than the first tragedy. That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. But the other side of this is, you’ve got after three and a half years of this American-style neofascist orientation, almost of white
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brothers still
brothers still
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vote for him, almost of white sisters—it increased—they still vote for him. Almost of Latinos still vote for him, almost of Asians, of Jews, of queers vote for Trump. So that you can see the fascist, the neofascist sensibility now has soaked in. So even with Trump off the stage in terms of the White House, we’ve got to deal with a whole culture that is generating these kinds of subjects and agents and try to speak to them. We don't need to trash them, we don't need to demonize them, we have to engage them and speak to them because many of them actually are suffering, but they don't see an alternative to the neoliberal order other than the neofascist one. We’ve got to convince them the alternative to the neoliberal order is the leftist one. I totally agree with you and my point just to go on would have been, of the politicians in Democratic Party formally at least, Bernie Sanders, I met some people close to him, knew this clearly. This how because of these links of Democratic Party establishment, Wall Street and so on, unfortunately Trump did attract a strong percentage even of the working class vote. And not only white, even some Latinos just above in southern Texas and so on and so forth. And black men. of black brothers. Yeah. So I think that, I think that the first problem that I see here is that as you said, brother Cornel, totally correctly, we shouldn’t just focus on the demonization of Trump. As if we lived in a normal welfare state order and then I don't know from where, from the moon, this monster came and ruined everything. No. We have to move, make a step back, this is called thinking, and see how was something, what was wrong with our pre-Trump, in quotation marks, "normal" democracy so that something like Trump could
vote for him, almost of white sisters—it increased—they still vote for him. Almost of Latinos still vote for him, almost of Asians, of Jews, of queers vote for Trump. So that you can see the fascist, the neofascist sensibility now has soaked in. So even with Trump off the stage in terms of the White House, we’ve got to deal with a whole culture that is generating these kinds of subjects and agents and try to speak to them. We don't need to trash them, we don't need to demonize them, we have to engage them and speak to them because many of them actually are suffering, but they don't see an alternative to the neoliberal order other than the neofascist one. We’ve got to convince them the alternative to the neoliberal order is the leftist one. I totally agree with you and my point just to go on would have been, of the politicians in Democratic Party formally at least, Bernie Sanders, I met some people close to him, knew this clearly. This how because of these links of Democratic Party establishment, Wall Street and so on, unfortunately Trump did attract a strong percentage even of the working class vote. And not only white, even some Latinos just above in southern Texas and so on and so forth. And black men. of black brothers. Yeah. So I think that, I think that the first problem that I see here is that as you said, brother Cornel, totally correctly, we shouldn’t just focus on the demonization of Trump. As if we lived in a normal welfare state order and then I don't know from where, from the moon, this monster came and ruined everything. No. We have to move, make a step back, this is called thinking, and see how was something, what was wrong with our pre-Trump, in quotation marks, "normal" democracy so that something like Trump could
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explode. That’s absolutely crucial. Another thing, I don't know which advice here to give, but isn’t it that it’s in very simplified terms that I will talk now, that basically in United States now there are four big political parties. There is Republican conservative establishment, there are populist Republicans, they overlap but not quite, then you have the Democratic establishment, more this new digital tech companies and so on, and you
explode. That’s absolutely crucial. Another thing, I don't know which advice here to give, but isn’t it that it’s in very simplified terms that I will talk now, that basically in United States now there are four big political parties. There is Republican conservative establishment, there are populist Republicans, they overlap but not quite, then you have the Democratic establishment, more this new digital tech companies and so on, and you
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have so-called Democratic
have so-called Democratic
Slavoj Žižek
Socialists. And for me, the crucial struggle is within Democratic Party. And I’m not here a total pessimist, as not
Socialists. And for me, the crucial struggle is within Democratic Party. And I’m not here a total pessimist, as not
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brother but
brother but
Slavoj Žižek
whatever Russell told me once, in a cynical sense, it’s even good that Democrats have now a
whatever Russell told me once, in a cynical sense, it’s even good that Democrats have now a
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small majority only in Congress. It means if
small majority only in Congress. It means if
Slavoj Žižek
Biden would want to push
Biden would want to push
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some legislation, he would depend on AOC and all that Democrats. Without them it would have been difficult for him to get the majority, no? We should be here radically in a good sense, pragmatic, opportunist, we should how do you call this in English, soak all the blood out of Biden in the sense of now you have to pay the price. You have to pay the price, no? And again, I agree with you, Trump was horror, but things happen. Imagine, socialism is rehabilitated. It's that’s why then Trump had to go to the step of madness. You remember he claimed Biden is a socialist. Then he was asked, "what about Kamala?" Oh, Kamala is a communist and so on. You know, like he was losing, totally losing cognitive mapping. But it’s a chance for us. And what I, I mean this in a cruel ironic way, not seriously of course, but in some sense Trump did open up in American political edifice some interesting political cracks, you know? That’s why Bernie Sanders often emphasized that we should drop, not we, the Democrats, this obsession with center, you know? We should not lose centrist voice. No, they didn’t take the lesson from Trump. Trump moved to the extremes and he won. We as Bernie said, our target should be those impoverished that you mentioned, Cornel, white and black people who were seduced into voting for Trump. These are our votes. Not this upper-middle classes whom we should seduce by keeping calm, "don't worry, we will not touch your wealth" and so on and so forth. It’s crucial to make this twist. Trump made it for the right side. We should make it for the left. Absolutely. And you’ve got of citizens in the US empire who don’t vote at all, who are completely outside of the participatory process, they’ve given up. And that wonderful Scylla and Charybdis that you have though, brother Žižek, between defeatism and blind activism, it’s very important. Very, very important. I think brother Michael Brooks, you know, he would want us to acknowledge the crucial role of what Max Weber called "the vocation of the intellectual." The vocation of the intellectual is to make sure that people can see things more clearly, the interdependence and the interrelations between empire and class and race and gender, to be able to feel things more deeply so that we have a sensitivity to the suffering of all poor and working people no matter what color, not just in America but around the world, and then to act more courageously. We are living in a moment of the
some legislation, he would depend on AOC and all that Democrats. Without them it would have been difficult for him to get the majority, no? We should be here radically in a good sense, pragmatic, opportunist, we should how do you call this in English, soak all the blood out of Biden in the sense of now you have to pay the price. You have to pay the price, no? And again, I agree with you, Trump was horror, but things happen. Imagine, socialism is rehabilitated. It's that’s why then Trump had to go to the step of madness. You remember he claimed Biden is a socialist. Then he was asked, "what about Kamala?" Oh, Kamala is a communist and so on. You know, like he was losing, totally losing cognitive mapping. But it’s a chance for us. And what I, I mean this in a cruel ironic way, not seriously of course, but in some sense Trump did open up in American political edifice some interesting political cracks, you know? That’s why Bernie Sanders often emphasized that we should drop, not we, the Democrats, this obsession with center, you know? We should not lose centrist voice. No, they didn’t take the lesson from Trump. Trump moved to the extremes and he won. We as Bernie said, our target should be those impoverished that you mentioned, Cornel, white and black people who were seduced into voting for Trump. These are our votes. Not this upper-middle classes whom we should seduce by keeping calm, "don't worry, we will not touch your wealth" and so on and so forth. It’s crucial to make this twist. Trump made it for the right side. We should make it for the left. Absolutely. And you’ve got of citizens in the US empire who don’t vote at all, who are completely outside of the participatory process, they’ve given up. And that wonderful Scylla and Charybdis that you have though, brother Žižek, between defeatism and blind activism, it’s very important. Very, very important. I think brother Michael Brooks, you know, he would want us to acknowledge the crucial role of what Max Weber called "the vocation of the intellectual." The vocation of the intellectual is to make sure that people can see things more clearly, the interdependence and the interrelations between empire and class and race and gender, to be able to feel things more deeply so that we have a sensitivity to the suffering of all poor and working people no matter what color, not just in America but around the world, and then to act more courageously. We are living in a moment of the
Slavoj Žižek
colossal failure of the intelligentsia that has so often accommodated itself to neoliberal
colossal failure of the intelligentsia that has so often accommodated itself to neoliberal
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smartness rather than serious revolutionary courage and joy and vision. They
smartness rather than serious revolutionary courage and joy and vision. They
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have
have
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fit in and
fit in and
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still want to act as if they’re transgressive in some symbolic way. The neoliberal university with its disciplinary division of knowledge has generated subjects and agents who are so unable to really disclose what needs to be seen more clearly. And this goes from ecological catastrophe to possible nuclear catastrophe to the various social and civic and economic catastrophes that our precious human beings all around the world have to live every day. So that the violence they have to come to terms with every day, the calamities and immoral monstrosities they have to come to terms with every day. So when a pandemic hits the world, so many of our chattering professional classes discombobulate because they never had to come to terms with catastrophe. The masses of people in the world are on intimate terms
still want to act as if they’re transgressive in some symbolic way. The neoliberal university with its disciplinary division of knowledge has generated subjects and agents who are so unable to really disclose what needs to be seen more clearly. And this goes from ecological catastrophe to possible nuclear catastrophe to the various social and civic and economic catastrophes that our precious human beings all around the world have to live every day. So that the violence they have to come to terms with every day, the calamities and immoral monstrosities they have to come to terms with every day. So when a pandemic hits the world, so many of our chattering professional classes discombobulate because they never had to come to terms with catastrophe. The masses of people in the world are on intimate terms
Slavoj Žižek
with catastrophe every day. And we have a, it’s sad that we don’t have enough Michael Brookses and Žižeks and Chomskys and Saids and Cornels and others to hit this head-on. No, I deeply agree with you here, especially with this temporality that you hinted at, namely I noticed this that for us in the so-called developed West, catastrophe happens as a bad nightmarish moment, whatever. And then everybody talks about it, you come to terms with it. But what about people for whom catastrophe is the daily way of life? It just drags on. The saddest thing I heard was from a black guy who came, he didn’t have money even to be there all the time, I of course allowed him to be for free in my classes to Birkbeck College London, a black guy from I think Burkina Faso and so on, one of those really black countries. And he told me, "You know that we even don’t have ISIS or whatever. We are so poor and broken that we even stopped dreaming politically." Maybe through religion, through revolution, something can be done. They are just in a totally depressive state. Another thing that may interest you. You know how many countries are in the world where the pandemic now is ravaging high numbers? But their situation, economic, military, violence, is so bad that COVID doesn’t register. For them, this is a minor disturbance. Yemen, Yemen. You know, attacked, a civil war, Saudi Arabia intervenes and so on and so forth. They with one of the highest numbers per capita in the world, it doesn’t register COVID. We should never forget this. This is our, you know that where you already see this Western bias or how should I put it. Even with pandemic, we talk all the time about, at least we in Europe, about first wave, second wave. Sorry, but in Latin America already the rhythm was totally different. You already you in the high point in summer when we had relative peace and so on and so forth. I mean, and you know what, along your lines, Cornel, where I agree with you, now there are so many things to fight for. For example, those in power already manipulate COVID so that they isolate it and claim "Now we fight this, we should forget about other struggles." For example, they claim "Now we don’t have time for ecological struggle, forget about global warming and so on and so forth, now we have to fight this." And they already announced, not only Trump, also in Europe, "We will consume more black coal and so on, everything." But I’m worried like hell here. You know that in northern Siberia, on Arctic sea, temperature this summer were over degrees? There, Arctic sea in northern Siberia, usually they were about degrees Celsius—sorry I’m talking Celsius, means over in Fahrenheit. So I think that Bruno Latour, the French philosopher with whom otherwise I don’t agree too much, but he was right at some point when he said: "Let’s never forget that the pandemic is just a dress rehearsal for a whole series of crises which are coming." We know that people to see the ecological background which created, outside global capitalism there would have been no pandemic. It would have been limited to some Chinese city, maybe even there
with catastrophe every day. And we have a, it’s sad that we don’t have enough Michael Brookses and Žižeks and Chomskys and Saids and Cornels and others to hit this head-on. No, I deeply agree with you here, especially with this temporality that you hinted at, namely I noticed this that for us in the so-called developed West, catastrophe happens as a bad nightmarish moment, whatever. And then everybody talks about it, you come to terms with it. But what about people for whom catastrophe is the daily way of life? It just drags on. The saddest thing I heard was from a black guy who came, he didn’t have money even to be there all the time, I of course allowed him to be for free in my classes to Birkbeck College London, a black guy from I think Burkina Faso and so on, one of those really black countries. And he told me, "You know that we even don’t have ISIS or whatever. We are so poor and broken that we even stopped dreaming politically." Maybe through religion, through revolution, something can be done. They are just in a totally depressive state. Another thing that may interest you. You know how many countries are in the world where the pandemic now is ravaging high numbers? But their situation, economic, military, violence, is so bad that COVID doesn’t register. For them, this is a minor disturbance. Yemen, Yemen. You know, attacked, a civil war, Saudi Arabia intervenes and so on and so forth. They with one of the highest numbers per capita in the world, it doesn’t register COVID. We should never forget this. This is our, you know that where you already see this Western bias or how should I put it. Even with pandemic, we talk all the time about, at least we in Europe, about first wave, second wave. Sorry, but in Latin America already the rhythm was totally different. You already you in the high point in summer when we had relative peace and so on and so forth. I mean, and you know what, along your lines, Cornel, where I agree with you, now there are so many things to fight for. For example, those in power already manipulate COVID so that they isolate it and claim "Now we fight this, we should forget about other struggles." For example, they claim "Now we don’t have time for ecological struggle, forget about global warming and so on and so forth, now we have to fight this." And they already announced, not only Trump, also in Europe, "We will consume more black coal and so on, everything." But I’m worried like hell here. You know that in northern Siberia, on Arctic sea, temperature this summer were over degrees? There, Arctic sea in northern Siberia, usually they were about degrees Celsius—sorry I’m talking Celsius, means over in Fahrenheit. So I think that Bruno Latour, the French philosopher with whom otherwise I don’t agree too much, but he was right at some point when he said: "Let’s never forget that the pandemic is just a dress rehearsal for a whole series of crises which are coming." We know that people to see the ecological background which created, outside global capitalism there would have been no pandemic. It would have been limited to some Chinese city, maybe even there
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because
because
Slavoj Žižek
they wouldn’t be eating that animals or whatever. It’s pandemic is not just a medical phenomenon, it’s a economic phenomenon, international, too much and so on and so forth. Absolutely. It reminds me in some ways though, you might remember brother Žižek and brother Russell, that when William James wrote one of his last essays, "A Moral Equivalent of War," and he was trying to deal with what he thought would be a neurasthenic, a nervous-centered anxiety-ridden middle class that they need something defined and substitute it for war. They need some martial spirit. And he had a good motivation, you know, he’s vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League, he was the one that said, "God damn America" for its vile actions in the Philippines. That was the basis of Jeremiah Wright’s famous sermon that Barack Obama— William James said this? I didn't know this. Oh yeah, he writes it in the pamphlet. You know, he and Mark Twain were the two great intellectuals who joined the anti-imperialist movement and he says, "God damn America" for the vile actions in the Philippines. Well, even his essay on a little on blindness in human beings was about the Philippines itself, the inability of American Americans and American soldiers to see the humanity.
they wouldn’t be eating that animals or whatever. It’s pandemic is not just a medical phenomenon, it’s a economic phenomenon, international, too much and so on and so forth. Absolutely. It reminds me in some ways though, you might remember brother Žižek and brother Russell, that when William James wrote one of his last essays, "A Moral Equivalent of War," and he was trying to deal with what he thought would be a neurasthenic, a nervous-centered anxiety-ridden middle class that they need something defined and substitute it for war. They need some martial spirit. And he had a good motivation, you know, he’s vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League, he was the one that said, "God damn America" for its vile actions in the Philippines. That was the basis of Jeremiah Wright’s famous sermon that Barack Obama— William James said this? I didn't know this. Oh yeah, he writes it in the pamphlet. You know, he and Mark Twain were the two great intellectuals who joined the anti-imperialist movement and he says, "God damn America" for the vile actions in the Philippines. Well, even his essay on a little on blindness in human beings was about the Philippines itself, the inability of American Americans and American soldiers to see the humanity.
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But John Dewey responded to William James and said, William James, you’re reflecting the silo. We love you, you’re adorable human being, but you’re reflecting the silo. For most human beings, they don’t need to be reminded of life as a war. They don’t need to be reminded of trying find some other, some alternative to engagement with a martial spirit. They’re struggling for food, they’re struggling for housing, they’re struggling for shelter, they’re struggling for education, they’re struggling for jobs with a living wage, they’re struggling to learn how to love and love their kids and their wives and their husbands and their trans and non-binary, whatever it is. And William James was honest, he said, good god Dewey, you’re right about that. I hadn't realized that. Which simply says, brother Žižek, says same thing. Just this catastrophe is just an aberration, it’s just a moment of abnormality. No, it is routinized, institutionalized in those Frantz Fanon called the wretched of the earth every day of their lives. That’s why the blues itself ain’t nothing but a personal narrative of a catastrophe lyrically expressed. "Nobody loves me but my mama and she might be jivin’ too," that’s B.B. King. "Strange Fruit," that is the catastrophe of American terrorism, of lynching, of Jim Crow, of Jane Crow. "Good morning heartache," here comes that catastrophe every morning, I’ve got to fight it all the time. So that the blues becomes not just a matter of skin pigmentation, it is an existential mode of being in the world for those who have both a
But John Dewey responded to William James and said, William James, you’re reflecting the silo. We love you, you’re adorable human being, but you’re reflecting the silo. For most human beings, they don’t need to be reminded of life as a war. They don’t need to be reminded of trying find some other, some alternative to engagement with a martial spirit. They’re struggling for food, they’re struggling for housing, they’re struggling for shelter, they’re struggling for education, they’re struggling for jobs with a living wage, they’re struggling to learn how to love and love their kids and their wives and their husbands and their trans and non-binary, whatever it is. And William James was honest, he said, good god Dewey, you’re right about that. I hadn't realized that. Which simply says, brother Žižek, says same thing. Just this catastrophe is just an aberration, it’s just a moment of abnormality. No, it is routinized, institutionalized in those Frantz Fanon called the wretched of the earth every day of their lives. That’s why the blues itself ain’t nothing but a personal narrative of a catastrophe lyrically expressed. "Nobody loves me but my mama and she might be jivin’ too," that’s B.B. King. "Strange Fruit," that is the catastrophe of American terrorism, of lynching, of Jim Crow, of Jane Crow. "Good morning heartache," here comes that catastrophe every morning, I’ve got to fight it all the time. So that the blues becomes not just a matter of skin pigmentation, it is an existential mode of being in the world for those who have both a
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sensitivity but also circumstances and conditions under which they know they must have a tenacity, an unbelievable fortitude, not just courage but fortitude. Totally agree with you, and if I may add, I would just like to introduce a distinction here. You mentioned this wonderful word "perhaps." But I think there are two perhapses. There is an ideological perhaps, that’s American ideology: "Now you are in deep shit, but perhaps tomorrow you will get lucky, you will become a millionaire." That’s the false perhaps which keeps the American machine going. The ideology is that it’s not just
sensitivity but also circumstances and conditions under which they know they must have a tenacity, an unbelievable fortitude, not just courage but fortitude. Totally agree with you, and if I may add, I would just like to introduce a distinction here. You mentioned this wonderful word "perhaps." But I think there are two perhapses. There is an ideological perhaps, that’s American ideology: "Now you are in deep shit, but perhaps tomorrow you will get lucky, you will become a millionaire." That’s the false perhaps which keeps the American machine going. The ideology is that it’s not just
Slavoj Žižek
what it is, it might radically change within the existing coordinates. Then there is the other, brother Cornel I agree totally with you, this more dialectical perhaps, which is not just that generally things can be different, but two points: that first, to understand what is going on actually, you also have to include what might have happened but didn’t. The whole Stalinism was a horrible thing. But the whole welfare state in the West, let’s admit it, was sustained because they were afraid that communism may spread also in the West, no? So we should even this is for me the hope for the left, that even if the left loses, it means that it was perceived as one of these perhapses, as a danger. I see. But you know but see I would argue and brother Russell can jump in on this though, I think that Beckett’s perhaps is certainly outside of America because American's perhaps is predicated on the metaphysical and ontological gravitas ascribed to futurity, ascribed to the future. It’s like the very end of *The Great Gatsby*. Gatsby believed in the green light, tomorrow things will be better, tomorrow they’ll be better, tomorrow now. See that’s that’s American adolescent mentality. Whitman’s Democratic Vistas. It's there, it’s there earlier than that too. But but let me make this other point because see now the dialectical thing my dear brother Žižek brought in this dialectical concept of perhaps, and I think Beckett’s perhaps swerves from even the dialectical perhaps. Because the dialectical perhaps still has a dynamism in it that’s pushing in a certain way, it’s almost Bergson-like *élan vital*, it’s with a certain kind of movement always already. Whereas I think for Beckett when he says the tears
what it is, it might radically change within the existing coordinates. Then there is the other, brother Cornel I agree totally with you, this more dialectical perhaps, which is not just that generally things can be different, but two points: that first, to understand what is going on actually, you also have to include what might have happened but didn’t. The whole Stalinism was a horrible thing. But the whole welfare state in the West, let’s admit it, was sustained because they were afraid that communism may spread also in the West, no? So we should even this is for me the hope for the left, that even if the left loses, it means that it was perceived as one of these perhapses, as a danger. I see. But you know but see I would argue and brother Russell can jump in on this though, I think that Beckett’s perhaps is certainly outside of America because American's perhaps is predicated on the metaphysical and ontological gravitas ascribed to futurity, ascribed to the future. It’s like the very end of *The Great Gatsby*. Gatsby believed in the green light, tomorrow things will be better, tomorrow they’ll be better, tomorrow now. See that’s that’s American adolescent mentality. Whitman’s Democratic Vistas. It's there, it’s there earlier than that too. But but let me make this other point because see now the dialectical thing my dear brother Žižek brought in this dialectical concept of perhaps, and I think Beckett’s perhaps swerves from even the dialectical perhaps. Because the dialectical perhaps still has a dynamism in it that’s pushing in a certain way, it’s almost Bergson-like *élan vital*, it’s with a certain kind of movement always already. Whereas I think for Beckett when he says the tears
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always
always
Slavoj Žižek
already are flowing, the domination already is there, even the perhaps itself is more Kierkegaardian without a Christian underlay. And that’s a deeper kind of perhaps than the dialectical perhaps as Žižek was talking about or the American perhaps that is just too Disneyland-like. You know how I would formulate this. I learned this at a university. You know that in some languages, but I think you don't get it in English, only in a mediate way, you get it in French. You have the two words for future: "future," future, and "avenir," to come. Today, although they are both future, they are not the same. For example, if you say the future president of the United States, it may be the same. But if you say "avenir," it’s a different prospect. Future is the conformist. Jacques Derrida, "democracy to come." He’s using *avenir*. Yeah, so so again, I I see your point, but you know what, I wonder if you would
already are flowing, the domination already is there, even the perhaps itself is more Kierkegaardian without a Christian underlay. And that’s a deeper kind of perhaps than the dialectical perhaps as Žižek was talking about or the American perhaps that is just too Disneyland-like. You know how I would formulate this. I learned this at a university. You know that in some languages, but I think you don't get it in English, only in a mediate way, you get it in French. You have the two words for future: "future," future, and "avenir," to come. Today, although they are both future, they are not the same. For example, if you say the future president of the United States, it may be the same. But if you say "avenir," it’s a different prospect. Future is the conformist. Jacques Derrida, "democracy to come." He’s using *avenir*. Yeah, so so again, I I see your point, but you know what, I wonder if you would
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agree this.
agree this.
Slavoj Žižek
When people tell me, "You are dreaming. No matter what kind of catastrophe, capitalism will incorporate it and so on." I say no, you are not living in the same world as me as a, I say let’s stop for a moment dreaming about different future and let’s just look what is happening. Capitalism is changing now tremendously. Look, for me, this is a small sign, empirical but important. You remember brother Cornel on the very day when they announced that in United Kingdom and US that it’s in a big depression, or even more unemployment and
When people tell me, "You are dreaming. No matter what kind of catastrophe, capitalism will incorporate it and so on." I say no, you are not living in the same world as me as a, I say let’s stop for a moment dreaming about different future and let’s just look what is happening. Capitalism is changing now tremendously. Look, for me, this is a small sign, empirical but important. You remember brother Cornel on the very day when they announced that in United Kingdom and US that it’s in a big depression, or even more unemployment and
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so on, stock market went up. So we have now a totally independent financial circulation which goes on, stock markets are raising even if poverty is exploding and so on and so forth. Then the second thing I, you know what’s my only problem with this formula, neoliberalism. Yes, I agree. But that it renders us blind for something: today, in more than capitalism develops, more state apparatuses, mechanisms are getting important. Today’s capitalism needs a strong state which intervenes all the time. That’s true. So you know, this, I don’t, this is what I miss in the term of neoliberalism, which sometimes promotes this narrative "Oh state is dwindling away already, we just..." No. No, because see that’s precisely why though brother when you get a Black Lives Matter movement, you’re talking about the repressive apparatus of the state targeting and bombarding folk in a serious way, and same is true with the Pentagon militarism, Africom on the African continent, the military units around the world and expanding under Democrats and Republicans. bombs being dropped every year under Obama administration, escalated under the Trump administration. That’s not the state withdrawing and shrinking at all. That’s why, that’s why I think that, but maybe this is one of the good side effects of this horrible phenomenon of Trump, you know, that it will maybe bring the American public up to a point of sense because I laughed a week or two ago I saw a title on CNN or where, "Will Trump succeed in making the coup d'etat?" No? Usually till now this would have been a title for a report from one of the so-called third, third-world rogue states. Now we know when we are: United States are a big first-world rogue state, you know? This is kind of a sobering moment. We we can no longer afford that perception, "we may have some trouble but still it’s United States, Western Europe, the civilized world" and then you know, that’s why we like TV. TV it’s a medium of distanciation. You look for bad news on TV, civil war in Yemen, but then you turn to your wife, children, drink beer, "oh but here you are safe." No, you are not safe. Well well this I mean yeah, I mean, you know this reminds me of a point Slavoj that you make a lot and I’ll connect it to to brother West as well, that, you know, Slavoj, you often you point out that even though it’s been, you know, it's long been fashionable, fashionable especially on the left, to dismiss Francis Fukuyama’s thesis about the end of history following the fall of the Berlin Wall in the end of the Cold War, but but nonetheless, the majority even on the left,
so on, stock market went up. So we have now a totally independent financial circulation which goes on, stock markets are raising even if poverty is exploding and so on and so forth. Then the second thing I, you know what’s my only problem with this formula, neoliberalism. Yes, I agree. But that it renders us blind for something: today, in more than capitalism develops, more state apparatuses, mechanisms are getting important. Today’s capitalism needs a strong state which intervenes all the time. That’s true. So you know, this, I don’t, this is what I miss in the term of neoliberalism, which sometimes promotes this narrative "Oh state is dwindling away already, we just..." No. No, because see that’s precisely why though brother when you get a Black Lives Matter movement, you’re talking about the repressive apparatus of the state targeting and bombarding folk in a serious way, and same is true with the Pentagon militarism, Africom on the African continent, the military units around the world and expanding under Democrats and Republicans. bombs being dropped every year under Obama administration, escalated under the Trump administration. That’s not the state withdrawing and shrinking at all. That’s why, that’s why I think that, but maybe this is one of the good side effects of this horrible phenomenon of Trump, you know, that it will maybe bring the American public up to a point of sense because I laughed a week or two ago I saw a title on CNN or where, "Will Trump succeed in making the coup d'etat?" No? Usually till now this would have been a title for a report from one of the so-called third, third-world rogue states. Now we know when we are: United States are a big first-world rogue state, you know? This is kind of a sobering moment. We we can no longer afford that perception, "we may have some trouble but still it’s United States, Western Europe, the civilized world" and then you know, that’s why we like TV. TV it’s a medium of distanciation. You look for bad news on TV, civil war in Yemen, but then you turn to your wife, children, drink beer, "oh but here you are safe." No, you are not safe. Well well this I mean yeah, I mean, you know this reminds me of a point Slavoj that you make a lot and I’ll connect it to to brother West as well, that, you know, Slavoj, you often you point out that even though it’s been, you know, it's long been fashionable, fashionable especially on the left, to dismiss Francis Fukuyama’s thesis about the end of history following the fall of the Berlin Wall in the end of the Cold War, but but nonetheless, the majority even on the left,
Slavoj Žižek
or maybe more center left, but still, you know, we nonetheless act as, as Fukuyamans. As though things, you know, as though capitalism isn’t going through these changes and we’re not seeing disaster capitalism now. So like, you’re right, despite um, you know, despite disparaging that argument, we’re still stuck in and Biden is a great representation of this. We’re still stuck in this pure this sheer intransigence of imagination, or a paucity of of imagination when it comes to thinking the future. As though, you know, that line that from Fred Jameson that you often repeat Slavoj that— Easy, I must admit it, yes although I repeat it, yes. It’s easy, you know, it’s easier for us it’s still easier for us to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine not just the end of capitalism but even a a relatively modest change in the mode of production. So that when Bernie Sanders comes along, and Cornel, you talked about this with with Michael, you know, years ago, um Bernie Sanders was running on what would have been considered a pretty modest social democratic platform. Modest, moderate. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And and even it was nonetheless even within the Democratic party cast as though this was some like you know one-way ticket to
or maybe more center left, but still, you know, we nonetheless act as, as Fukuyamans. As though things, you know, as though capitalism isn’t going through these changes and we’re not seeing disaster capitalism now. So like, you’re right, despite um, you know, despite disparaging that argument, we’re still stuck in and Biden is a great representation of this. We’re still stuck in this pure this sheer intransigence of imagination, or a paucity of of imagination when it comes to thinking the future. As though, you know, that line that from Fred Jameson that you often repeat Slavoj that— Easy, I must admit it, yes although I repeat it, yes. It’s easy, you know, it’s easier for us it’s still easier for us to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine not just the end of capitalism but even a a relatively modest change in the mode of production. So that when Bernie Sanders comes along, and Cornel, you talked about this with with Michael, you know, years ago, um Bernie Sanders was running on what would have been considered a pretty modest social democratic platform. Modest, moderate. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And and even it was nonetheless even within the Democratic party cast as though this was some like you know one-way ticket to
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Venezuela. Um and it’s, yeah, the worry is that—and Cornel, you were mentioning this earlier about the the number of black men, of Latinos, of um LGBTQ people who voted for Trump because, you know, going back to how it was under Obama as though you know that didn’t give us Trump, that’s not going to help things. That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. And you know, Slavoj, you say at one point, you know, this I’m thinking back of the "perhaps," you know, "Perhaps there is, you know, light at the end of
Venezuela. Um and it’s, yeah, the worry is that—and Cornel, you were mentioning this earlier about the the number of black men, of Latinos, of um LGBTQ people who voted for Trump because, you know, going back to how it was under Obama as though you know that didn’t give us Trump, that’s not going to help things. That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. And you know, Slavoj, you say at one point, you know, this I’m thinking back of the "perhaps," you know, "Perhaps there is, you know, light at the end of
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the tunnel, or maybe it's another train coming at us." You’ve used that metaphor. No, but you know what, you
the tunnel, or maybe it's another train coming at us." You’ve used that metaphor. No, but you know what, you
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know what should be our formula. I learned this from some reports in Chile when explosions—sorry if you know this story—when protests exploded more than a year ago, then they came up with a wonderful slogan: "Another end of the world is possible." You know? Not against catastrophe. We accept our world the way we knew it is coming to an end. And we shouldn’t say, "no no it will be okay, old normality." No. There will
know what should be our formula. I learned this from some reports in Chile when explosions—sorry if you know this story—when protests exploded more than a year ago, then they came up with a wonderful slogan: "Another end of the world is possible." You know? Not against catastrophe. We accept our world the way we knew it is coming to an end. And we shouldn’t say, "no no it will be okay, old normality." No. There will
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be the end of your
be the end of your
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world, your ruling class and so on. But those in power, that's my pessimism, secretly know it and they are already preparing us for different catastrophic scenarios. For the ruling class this bubble, living in bubbles, total isolation and so on, for the poor this terrible choice: either you die directly
world, your ruling class and so on. But those in power, that's my pessimism, secretly know it and they are already preparing us for different catastrophic scenarios. For the ruling class this bubble, living in bubbles, total isolation and so on, for the poor this terrible choice: either you die directly
Slavoj Žižek
of hunger, or you risk death through because, you know, all these bubbles and living behind a screen in your apartment, yes but somebody has to bring you food and so on and so forth. So I think that we have to accept that the world as we knew it is coming to an end. That’s the hopelessness, but to confront this hopelessness should bring us hope.
of hunger, or you risk death through because, you know, all these bubbles and living behind a screen in your apartment, yes but somebody has to bring you food and so on and so forth. So I think that we have to accept that the world as we knew it is coming to an end. That’s the hopelessness, but to confront this hopelessness should bring us hope.
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And things are
And things are
Slavoj Žižek
possible—I am not talking now even of a radical revolution. Brother Cornel, would you agree? I knew situation pretty well, I visited them some
possible—I am not talking now even of a radical revolution. Brother Cornel, would you agree? I knew situation pretty well, I visited them some
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six, seven years ago. Look at
six, seven years ago. Look at
Slavoj Žižek
the miracle they did in Bolivia. They respected all the rules of democracy and they it wasn’t the old leftist story, radical lefties take over with the best intentions and then in one year economy goes wrong, you have hunger. No. The standard of living raised. They did great work economically and these are old stories. That’s why there had to be a coup d’etat against Morales, Linera and so on. Not because it was the old story, communist totalitarianism, because they demonstrated how it can work. A socialism which is democratic, which doesn’t ruin the economy. They were the most dangerous. No, that’s true. There is hope. That’s true. That's true. You know, it’s very interesting though that uh we had the brother Fukuyama at our class that I teach, I teach a class with Roberto Unger, one of the great social theorists at Harvard Law School, and Fukuyama was there. You know, Fukuyama was a defender of Bernie Sanders this time. Really? He changed so much? Oh he’s changed so much. Oh yeah, and he was reflecting on his pilgrimage, his change. Because you all remember now it was just not the end of history but it was also the "Last Man," you had Nietzsche and Last Man, you got the T.S. Eliot "Hollow Man." The emptiness, the vacuity that even the neoliberal capitalism generates in culture and in shaping persons, the kind of hollowed-out character, as it
the miracle they did in Bolivia. They respected all the rules of democracy and they it wasn’t the old leftist story, radical lefties take over with the best intentions and then in one year economy goes wrong, you have hunger. No. The standard of living raised. They did great work economically and these are old stories. That’s why there had to be a coup d’etat against Morales, Linera and so on. Not because it was the old story, communist totalitarianism, because they demonstrated how it can work. A socialism which is democratic, which doesn’t ruin the economy. They were the most dangerous. No, that’s true. There is hope. That’s true. That's true. You know, it’s very interesting though that uh we had the brother Fukuyama at our class that I teach, I teach a class with Roberto Unger, one of the great social theorists at Harvard Law School, and Fukuyama was there. You know, Fukuyama was a defender of Bernie Sanders this time. Really? He changed so much? Oh he’s changed so much. Oh yeah, and he was reflecting on his pilgrimage, his change. Because you all remember now it was just not the end of history but it was also the "Last Man," you had Nietzsche and Last Man, you got the T.S. Eliot "Hollow Man." The emptiness, the vacuity that even the neoliberal capitalism generates in culture and in shaping persons, the kind of hollowed-out character, as it
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were, or the collapse of the ethical subject that Badiou talks about um as well. But for me what’s crucial here though is how do we keep alive in a moment in which we can embrace a kind of hopelessness as a comma but not a period. So that it unsettles us in such a way that we then see, feel—I mean it’s like Shelley’s poets, right? The unacknowledged legislators of the world, the hierophants of the unapprehended inspiration, the mirrors of
were, or the collapse of the ethical subject that Badiou talks about um as well. But for me what’s crucial here though is how do we keep alive in a moment in which we can embrace a kind of hopelessness as a comma but not a period. So that it unsettles us in such a way that we then see, feel—I mean it’s like Shelley’s poets, right? The unacknowledged legislators of the world, the hierophants of the unapprehended inspiration, the mirrors of
Slavoj Žižek
the gigantic shadows of the future cast on the present. That’s utopian energy at its deepest level. And but but this apocalyptic imagination takes me back to my own Christian sensibilities, that I was giving a paper at the Federalist Society, a given a presentation to the Federalist Society the other day with my my conservative brother Robbie George. They let me into deeply conservative precincts, right? And so I talked about, well, you know there’s more than one road to serfdom. You all are obsessed with Hayek and the concentration of power in the public sphere. Concentration of power in the private sphere can push you to serfdom too. The obsession with liberties ends up, you know, "liberty for wolves means death for the sheep," but death for the lambs. So that the the
the gigantic shadows of the future cast on the present. That’s utopian energy at its deepest level. And but but this apocalyptic imagination takes me back to my own Christian sensibilities, that I was giving a paper at the Federalist Society, a given a presentation to the Federalist Society the other day with my my conservative brother Robbie George. They let me into deeply conservative precincts, right? And so I talked about, well, you know there’s more than one road to serfdom. You all are obsessed with Hayek and the concentration of power in the public sphere. Concentration of power in the private sphere can push you to serfdom too. The obsession with liberties ends up, you know, "liberty for wolves means death for the sheep," but death for the lambs. So that the the
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conception of an alternative, the shattering that Tina, "there is no alternative." How do you just shatter that over and over and over again? Within you got Jesus making his way into the temple and running out the money changers. And what’s the temple? Wall Street, Pentagon, Congress, Hollywood, Harvard, Yale, Oxford,
conception of an alternative, the shattering that Tina, "there is no alternative." How do you just shatter that over and over and over again? Within you got Jesus making his way into the temple and running out the money changers. And what’s the temple? Wall Street, Pentagon, Congress, Hollywood, Harvard, Yale, Oxford,
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World Bank. I mean all of these oligarchs, plutocrats, sites of ruling classes and predatory capitalist civilizations. What is the running out about? Well, it’s about a certain kind of calling, it’s about a certain kind of witness, and it is a "perhaps." Because it’s a call, "your world is over." We’re going to turn this upside down not in any simplistic way, of course we’re going to have to deal with antecedent practices, but your world is over. Morally and spiritually, it is over. It’s barbaric, it’s greed, it’s corruption, it’s hatred, it’s contempt, all the things that you yourself in your empty rhetoric have have opposed, but in practice, you refuse to stop it. Now in that sense, it’s still very you know in some ways tragicomic because you know Jesus headed to the cross and that was the reason why they put him on the cross, because he ran out the money changers. And the question then becomes how do we do this collectively, in an organized way, how do we do this with a moral and spiritual integrity, and yet recognize we’re dealing with gangsters and thugs even as human beings, but there’s a gangster and thug inside of us, that spiritual fascism that Foucault talked about in his introduction to Deleuze’s book. That’s true. But that ought not in any way disempower us or dampen our fire. That's the crucial thing. I deeply agree with you, can I just, Russell don’t be afraid, will not be too long. I would like to show another dimension of this perhaps. That’s why I think there is even in the ongoing tragedy of the pandemic, COVID, a new perhaps. States were forced to do things which were
World Bank. I mean all of these oligarchs, plutocrats, sites of ruling classes and predatory capitalist civilizations. What is the running out about? Well, it’s about a certain kind of calling, it’s about a certain kind of witness, and it is a "perhaps." Because it’s a call, "your world is over." We’re going to turn this upside down not in any simplistic way, of course we’re going to have to deal with antecedent practices, but your world is over. Morally and spiritually, it is over. It’s barbaric, it’s greed, it’s corruption, it’s hatred, it’s contempt, all the things that you yourself in your empty rhetoric have have opposed, but in practice, you refuse to stop it. Now in that sense, it’s still very you know in some ways tragicomic because you know Jesus headed to the cross and that was the reason why they put him on the cross, because he ran out the money changers. And the question then becomes how do we do this collectively, in an organized way, how do we do this with a moral and spiritual integrity, and yet recognize we’re dealing with gangsters and thugs even as human beings, but there’s a gangster and thug inside of us, that spiritual fascism that Foucault talked about in his introduction to Deleuze’s book. That’s true. But that ought not in any way disempower us or dampen our fire. That's the crucial thing. I deeply agree with you, can I just, Russell don’t be afraid, will not be too long. I would like to show another dimension of this perhaps. That’s why I think there is even in the ongoing tragedy of the pandemic, COVID, a new perhaps. States were forced to do things which were
Slavoj Žižek
unimaginable a year ago. Absolutely, absolutely. Almost de facto even conservative politicians de facto introducing some kind of universal income, helping people, putting money into health in a way which cannot be justified in the economic terms of the market logic and so on and so forth. So they had to do what we radical leftists preach, elements of. Of course now they try to twist and turn it, but some kind of socialized economy. No, it’s not the spontaneity of market, we simply like in a war you need tanks, bombs. Now we need vaccines, hospitals and so on and there is no debate about how will the market sustain it, you have to do it. Another ethical test. Now it’s important that at least, although they will cheat like crazy, but at least the international G20 or whatever accepted the principle that it would have been an global ethical catastrophe if there would have been class and state national distinctions: first the developed West will get the vaccines and so on. We were confronted with the dilemma and in principle there is the right decision: vaccines for everybody, egalitarian distribution. You we are, and not only this. Then local communities. French were telling me, I don’t know how this in the States, but from Spain, Germany, that local committees re-emerged because the state wasn’t efficient enough. That's happened in the States, my brother, that's happened in the States. People said, "wait a minute, let's check our couple of streets, are there any old people living alone" and so on and so forth. Absolutely. I am not saying that COVID is one step towards communism, I am not crazy. I am just saying it’s a perhaps,
unimaginable a year ago. Absolutely, absolutely. Almost de facto even conservative politicians de facto introducing some kind of universal income, helping people, putting money into health in a way which cannot be justified in the economic terms of the market logic and so on and so forth. So they had to do what we radical leftists preach, elements of. Of course now they try to twist and turn it, but some kind of socialized economy. No, it’s not the spontaneity of market, we simply like in a war you need tanks, bombs. Now we need vaccines, hospitals and so on and there is no debate about how will the market sustain it, you have to do it. Another ethical test. Now it’s important that at least, although they will cheat like crazy, but at least the international G20 or whatever accepted the principle that it would have been an global ethical catastrophe if there would have been class and state national distinctions: first the developed West will get the vaccines and so on. We were confronted with the dilemma and in principle there is the right decision: vaccines for everybody, egalitarian distribution. You we are, and not only this. Then local communities. French were telling me, I don’t know how this in the States, but from Spain, Germany, that local committees re-emerged because the state wasn’t efficient enough. That's happened in the States, my brother, that's happened in the States. People said, "wait a minute, let's check our couple of streets, are there any old people living alone" and so on and so forth. Absolutely. I am not saying that COVID is one step towards communism, I am not crazy. I am just saying it’s a perhaps,
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and those in power know it, and that’s why their main worry now is with with the vaccine to get rid of it and then to return to the old normal. Absolutely. And we fail because and let me let me just say this brother Russell in response because I know we coming to a close here, is that I just want to say that the very fact that our dear brother Michael Brooks could bring us together in this way after all these years in his own witness, his own vision, his own embracing from Brazil and Lula across to Turkey and so forth and it’s just been a a joy for me for him to be in my life just like it’s a joy for me to be the brother and comrade of brother Žižek because I read this brother all the time, even though he writes so much it’s hard to keep track of it, but and then to get a chance to meet you brother Russell. Can’t wait to read your book on Melville. You’ve already done wonderful stuff on on materialism and Hegel and so forth. But this is exactly how we fortify each other to keep our intellectual and moral and political armor strong enough so the forces coming at us cannot so easily pierce through and dampen our spirits and thwart our minds and most importantly will never convince us to sell out and sell our souls for a mess of pottage. That we'll bear witness to an integrity and a solidarity. All the identity politics in the world ain’t going to mean nothing if it’s not rooted in integrity and solidarity that takes the courage to tell the truth in which class and empire become crucial, crucial along with the white supremacy and white and male supremacy and others. But that’s the legacy of our dear brother Michael. I totally agree with you and just to finish two things you mentioned Cornel but I think they should be emphasized again. First, you mentioned spirit. Yes, we shouldn’t become this the bad version of this caricatural, the unfortunate this political correctness when you tell a joke, "Oh my god are you looking for..." No. We should keep the spirit, even the comic spirit, alive. No, they will not ruin us. We will still laugh, still enjoy life. They will not make us
and those in power know it, and that’s why their main worry now is with with the vaccine to get rid of it and then to return to the old normal. Absolutely. And we fail because and let me let me just say this brother Russell in response because I know we coming to a close here, is that I just want to say that the very fact that our dear brother Michael Brooks could bring us together in this way after all these years in his own witness, his own vision, his own embracing from Brazil and Lula across to Turkey and so forth and it’s just been a a joy for me for him to be in my life just like it’s a joy for me to be the brother and comrade of brother Žižek because I read this brother all the time, even though he writes so much it’s hard to keep track of it, but and then to get a chance to meet you brother Russell. Can’t wait to read your book on Melville. You’ve already done wonderful stuff on on materialism and Hegel and so forth. But this is exactly how we fortify each other to keep our intellectual and moral and political armor strong enough so the forces coming at us cannot so easily pierce through and dampen our spirits and thwart our minds and most importantly will never convince us to sell out and sell our souls for a mess of pottage. That we'll bear witness to an integrity and a solidarity. All the identity politics in the world ain’t going to mean nothing if it’s not rooted in integrity and solidarity that takes the courage to tell the truth in which class and empire become crucial, crucial along with the white supremacy and white and male supremacy and others. But that’s the legacy of our dear brother Michael. I totally agree with you and just to finish two things you mentioned Cornel but I think they should be emphasized again. First, you mentioned spirit. Yes, we shouldn’t become this the bad version of this caricatural, the unfortunate this political correctness when you tell a joke, "Oh my god are you looking for..." No. We should keep the spirit, even the comic spirit, alive. No, they will not ruin us. We will still laugh, still enjoy life. They will not make us
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this, you know, frustrated people like like this bad joke of a, you remember, of a pseudo-Christian who you laugh and he says "How can you laugh when our Lord Jesus suffered on a cross?" No, Kierkegaard saw this, Jesus is in some deep spiritual sense a comic figure. You know what Kierkegaard takes as an example of Christ? Just as Chesterton saw it better. G.K. Chesterton even saw it better: he hid his mirth, he hid his sense of the comic, he hid his laughter. So intimate, so intimate. Just because my publisher will kill me if I don’t mention this, that the book of mine just appeared with Or Books, *Pandemic! Chronicles of a Time Lost*. By "time lost" I mean this summer months, no? Where I try to go precisely into all this: COVID as a catastrophe, and COVID as a perhaps, an opportunity. Because as because I think it is so important that we don’t fall into what I call technocratic trap, which is, "Okay, we can have our leftist or whatever
this, you know, frustrated people like like this bad joke of a, you remember, of a pseudo-Christian who you laugh and he says "How can you laugh when our Lord Jesus suffered on a cross?" No, Kierkegaard saw this, Jesus is in some deep spiritual sense a comic figure. You know what Kierkegaard takes as an example of Christ? Just as Chesterton saw it better. G.K. Chesterton even saw it better: he hid his mirth, he hid his sense of the comic, he hid his laughter. So intimate, so intimate. Just because my publisher will kill me if I don’t mention this, that the book of mine just appeared with Or Books, *Pandemic! Chronicles of a Time Lost*. By "time lost" I mean this summer months, no? Where I try to go precisely into all this: COVID as a catastrophe, and COVID as a perhaps, an opportunity. Because as because I think it is so important that we don’t fall into what I call technocratic trap, which is, "Okay, we can have our leftist or whatever
Slavoj Žižek
dreams, now it’s a serious medical situation, don’t think about politics, it’s a pure medical crisis." No! Oh no, no, no. This is a radical imaginable moment. The old world is dying and all the reaction to COVID is how to fight, which new future will be offered to us. Trump offered his rather barbaric future, hundreds of thousands can die just that life goes on. Bill Gates and so on are offering us this technocratic future and so on. Now we have to fight for a different future. Now we are, brother Cornel, would you agree, this famous expression by Walter Benjamin: "dialectic in standstill." Things apparently don’t move now, I mean politically. But here the real change is happening. They appear that we are now just in an emergency. No, people things are in suspense but now the new world is secretly beneath the earth it’s it’s forming itself. Now is the time to be active. Absolutely, absolutely. Well I mean to to end this with a reference to what brother West you were talking with Michael about last time was that the sign that this is happening, what you’re talking about Slavoj, is that the Democratic, the center, the the neoliberal corporate center, when they want to coalesce around a project, they can do it. We saw that when they coalesced around, they came together to block to block Bernie. Because they know that time is up and that time's—I
dreams, now it’s a serious medical situation, don’t think about politics, it’s a pure medical crisis." No! Oh no, no, no. This is a radical imaginable moment. The old world is dying and all the reaction to COVID is how to fight, which new future will be offered to us. Trump offered his rather barbaric future, hundreds of thousands can die just that life goes on. Bill Gates and so on are offering us this technocratic future and so on. Now we have to fight for a different future. Now we are, brother Cornel, would you agree, this famous expression by Walter Benjamin: "dialectic in standstill." Things apparently don’t move now, I mean politically. But here the real change is happening. They appear that we are now just in an emergency. No, people things are in suspense but now the new world is secretly beneath the earth it’s it’s forming itself. Now is the time to be active. Absolutely, absolutely. Well I mean to to end this with a reference to what brother West you were talking with Michael about last time was that the sign that this is happening, what you’re talking about Slavoj, is that the Democratic, the center, the the neoliberal corporate center, when they want to coalesce around a project, they can do it. We saw that when they coalesced around, they came together to block to block Bernie. Because they know that time is up and that time's—I
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mean, we haven't we
mean, we haven't we
Slavoj Žižek
haven't seen a Democratic Party that united in probably years. So it’s it’s coming. Um well, listen— Yeah, but as a perhaps nonetheless. As a
haven't seen a Democratic Party that united in probably years. So it’s it’s coming. Um well, listen— Yeah, but as a perhaps nonetheless. As a
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perhaps nonetheless. That’s exactly right. Well, you know, I was blessed to be with you know brother Bernie when we thought we were going to win out in Nevada, we were already thinking we’re on our way to the White House built by African slaves. And at the same time when they came together, we were not really thoroughly surprised because again the Obama’s neoliberal authority and his phone call that brought all of them together and say "anybody but Trump"—excuse me, "anybody but Bernie." "Anybody but Bernie." What he was saying was, anybody who calls into question the Wall Street greed and the Pentagon militarism, anybody who calls into question multiracial solidarity with poor and working people, anybody who calls into question our crimes and lies hidden behind our polished neoliberal rhetoric. That’s what they were saying. That’s the message in the end. Yeah. And that’s where young folk especially, but not only young folk, parts of the labor movement, parts of the feminist movement, parts of the black freedom movement and the Black Lives Matter movement
perhaps nonetheless. That’s exactly right. Well, you know, I was blessed to be with you know brother Bernie when we thought we were going to win out in Nevada, we were already thinking we’re on our way to the White House built by African slaves. And at the same time when they came together, we were not really thoroughly surprised because again the Obama’s neoliberal authority and his phone call that brought all of them together and say "anybody but Trump"—excuse me, "anybody but Bernie." "Anybody but Bernie." What he was saying was, anybody who calls into question the Wall Street greed and the Pentagon militarism, anybody who calls into question multiracial solidarity with poor and working people, anybody who calls into question our crimes and lies hidden behind our polished neoliberal rhetoric. That’s what they were saying. That’s the message in the end. Yeah. And that’s where young folk especially, but not only young folk, parts of the labor movement, parts of the feminist movement, parts of the black freedom movement and the Black Lives Matter movement
Slavoj Žižek
are saying, "Look, we’re not going to withdraw our critiques of US imperial policy in the Middle East and Africa, we’re not going to withdraw our critiques of Wall Street and so on." That’s the kind of bubbling that brother Žižek was talking about, that bubbling up from below as it were. And that is, I think, escalating. That’s the good news. But brother Cornel, can I just say that this is why your wonderful mistake, "anybody but Bernie" instead of "anybody but Trump," it’s true. Because the way centrist Democrats focused on "anybody but Trump, at any
are saying, "Look, we’re not going to withdraw our critiques of US imperial policy in the Middle East and Africa, we’re not going to withdraw our critiques of Wall Street and so on." That’s the kind of bubbling that brother Žižek was talking about, that bubbling up from below as it were. And that is, I think, escalating. That’s the good news. But brother Cornel, can I just say that this is why your wonderful mistake, "anybody but Bernie" instead of "anybody but Trump," it’s true. Because the way centrist Democrats focused on "anybody but Trump, at any
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cost we have to prevent Trump from being reelected," the true strategy was the
cost we have to prevent Trump from being reelected," the true strategy was the
Slavoj Žižek
implied logic which is "the main goal is to get rid of Trump, so forget about democratic socialism, we have to get together to..." That’s right. "Anybody but Trump" was a mask for the true content which was "anybody but Bernie." That’s true. Ooh, that’s a powerful point. That’s a powerful point. But I’m telling you know this dialogue has been like a jazz trio because we just bouncing off and riffing off different voices and listening very closely and responding very closely. But brother Russell was reduced to just that lazy drummer who every minutes hits one... Sorry, Russell. I hope you're not angry. I kept I kept the time though. I kept the time. So that’s all that matters, you know? Brother Russell said, no no Elvin Jones here though, no Max Roach, just gonna just kind of play it real slow, play it real slow. No but that’s part of your humility though brother, we we appreciate that. Because because you know me and brother Žižek, we could go for hours. I wanted I want to get—if we had some cognac, if we had some cognac together we’d just gone on for into the night
implied logic which is "the main goal is to get rid of Trump, so forget about democratic socialism, we have to get together to..." That’s right. "Anybody but Trump" was a mask for the true content which was "anybody but Bernie." That’s true. Ooh, that’s a powerful point. That’s a powerful point. But I’m telling you know this dialogue has been like a jazz trio because we just bouncing off and riffing off different voices and listening very closely and responding very closely. But brother Russell was reduced to just that lazy drummer who every minutes hits one... Sorry, Russell. I hope you're not angry. I kept I kept the time though. I kept the time. So that’s all that matters, you know? Brother Russell said, no no Elvin Jones here though, no Max Roach, just gonna just kind of play it real slow, play it real slow. No but that’s part of your humility though brother, we we appreciate that. Because because you know me and brother Žižek, we could go for hours. I wanted I want to get—if we had some cognac, if we had some cognac together we’d just gone on for into the night
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because I could talk to this brother just forever, I’m telling you. Listen, the people, the people want to hear want to hear the two of you. So I think Michael would have been thrilled by this and I still I mean I I can’t remember the last time I had this much
because I could talk to this brother just forever, I’m telling you. Listen, the people, the people want to hear want to hear the two of you. So I think Michael would have been thrilled by this and I still I mean I I can’t remember the last time I had this much
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fun. So thank you both for kicking this off. I think, you know, I mentioned this at the beginning, that there is going to be a number of panels, Adolf and and Toure Reed are going to be on the next one on, one of the next ones on neoliberalism with Harvey Kaye, and then we have one on left economics with Mark Blyth, Ben Burgis, and Richard Wolff. So those will be coming soon, but uh and I think that continuing the project, Michael’s vision, collaboratively is the best way to to honor him and to carry on his work. So thanks to both of you so much for for joining us today and we’ll all keep Michael Jamal Brooks. And we and we want to salute Sister Lisha because she’s carrying on in a magnificent way, I’m telling you. Even I, who often, agree with you Cornel, make fun of so-called feminist
fun. So thank you both for kicking this off. I think, you know, I mentioned this at the beginning, that there is going to be a number of panels, Adolf and and Toure Reed are going to be on the next one on, one of the next ones on neoliberalism with Harvey Kaye, and then we have one on left economics with Mark Blyth, Ben Burgis, and Richard Wolff. So those will be coming soon, but uh and I think that continuing the project, Michael’s vision, collaboratively is the best way to to honor him and to carry on his work. So thanks to both of you so much for for joining us today and we’ll all keep Michael Jamal Brooks. And we and we want to salute Sister Lisha because she’s carrying on in a magnificent way, I’m telling you. Even I, who often, agree with you Cornel, make fun of so-called feminist
Slavoj Žižek
excesses, but I consider myself absolutely a feminist, I don't like it how the lady was erased from the picture so that we three elder stupid men could have—you know. No but today, today I know as a philosopher, all the best books on Hegel are
excesses, but I consider myself absolutely a feminist, I don't like it how the lady was erased from the picture so that we three elder stupid men could have—you know. No but today, today I know as a philosopher, all the best books on Hegel are
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written by women. The best politician who deal relatively well
written by women. The best politician who deal relatively well
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with pandemic, go through them, Jacinda Ardern, Angela
with pandemic, go through them, Jacinda Ardern, Angela
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Merkel, not so bad till now in Germany. It’s your time. I admit this with my teeth clenched, I am angry really, but it’s your
Merkel, not so bad till now in Germany. It’s your time. I admit this with my teeth clenched, I am angry really, but it’s your
unknown
time.
time.
Slavoj Žižek
Better politicians, many are better theorists
Better politicians, many are better theorists
unknown
today,
today,
Slavoj Žižek
you know? We’ll do it again. No we thank you though, sister, we thank you.
you know? We’ll do it again. No we thank you though, sister, we thank you.
unknown
We thank you, yes. Absolutely, Sister Lisha. Wonderful. Love brother Brooks.
We thank you, yes. Absolutely, Sister Lisha. Wonderful. Love brother Brooks.
unknown
Yes, love to Michael. Love to you all.
Yes, love to Michael. Love to you all.