Reconstructing Communism: Part 3 THREAT—Capitalism
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2018-06-17 · 1:14:39 · 9,829 words
capitalismideologypsychoanalysishegel-dialecticsecology-climatetechnology-ai-cyberspaceliberalism-political-correctnesscommunism-socialismgeopolitics-warphilosophy-generalconsciousness-mindscience-physics
A wide-ranging lecture delivered at EGS in which Žižek surveys what he sees as the four fundamental limits of capitalism today: the privatization of intellectual commons, ecological breakdown, biogenetic and digital control of human nature, and the permanent underclass of those 'left behind.' Along the way he critiques both naive empiricism (experience as the measure of justice), the Marxist eschatology of alienation-overcoming, and the political-correctness reflex that substitutes humanitarian moralism for structural analysis. The talk closes with reflections on post-human subjectivity, quantum physics as a model of ontological incompleteness, and a call to 'learn, learn, and learn' rather than pretend to have ready solutions.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 20
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
The German philosophical term for 'that which you cannot step behind', the irreducible horizon of our access to reality, cited approvingly by Žižek.
Heidegger's 'clearing' or openness of being: the ultimate horizon beyond which we cannot step to ask how things really are in themselves.
Heidegger's 'being-in-the-world': the way perception is always already overdetermined by practical engagement, such that we cannot step outside our horizon to see things 'as they really are'.
The idea, drawn from Niels Bohr's reading of quantum physics, that reality itself is unfinished rather than merely unknowable by us, particles do not possess position and velocity prior to measurement.
Marx's concept that history appears to individuals as a process out of control where intentions produce unintended outcomes; Žižek argues this persists even in revolutionary communist acts.
Lukács's concept of the proletariat as the first class that both makes history and can know it; Žižek invokes it only to reject it as falsified by 20th-century communist experience.
as “left behind”
The permanent underclass literally excluded from the global capitalist cupola, those who do not emigrate and are forgotten when the refugee crisis is reframed as a humanitarian problem.
as “pre-tribulation rapture”
Used as a political allegory: those truly faithful are raptured before the battle, leaving the doubters and atheists to fight Antichrist, the insight being that true belief makes one useless for the actual struggle.
The practice by Western states of sending prisoners to allied regimes (e.g. Gaddafi's Libya) for interrogation under torture, analogized to economic outsourcing for cheap labor.
Badiou's term for refugees conceived as a revolutionary subject; Žižek rejects the romanticization, arguing refugees simply want stable employment, not revolution.
as “commons”
Žižek distinguishes three threatened commons: cultural/intellectual (software, knowledge), external nature (ecology), and internal nature (biogenetics, brain-computer interfaces).
The process by which mega-capitalists like Bill Gates appropriate shared cultural or digital infrastructure and charge rent for access to what should be collective resources.
as “return from profit to rent”
The claim that the wealth of platform and software capitalists derives not from classical surplus-value extraction but from rent, payment for access to a privatized commons.
The geological epoch in which humanity has become a planetary force, producing a fundamental Unbehagen in der Natur: nature itself is denaturalized and no longer serves as a reliable background.
Žižek's extension of Freud's 'Unbehagen in der Kultur' to nature itself: we are no longer simply out of place in civilization but in nature, which has become denaturalized.
as “intellektuelle Anschauung”
The German idealist concept (intellectual intuition) where thought and reality coincide; Žižek invokes it to describe brain-computer interfaces where intending to move and moving become one.
Not explicitly theorized here but implied in the discussion of ideology and enjoyment; the term is background to Žižek's account of why capitalism persists despite its irrationalities.
as “capitalism without its symptom”
Marx's implicit dream that communism would preserve capitalism's dynamic expansion while eliminating its contradictions; Žižek argues the contradiction is the positive condition of the dynamic.
The signifier that represents its own absence or lack within a set; illustrated by the joke 'Lenin in Warsaw' where the title names what is excluded from the image.
as “Vorstellungsrepräsentanz”
Lacan's/Freud's term for the signifier of a lack: the title 'Lenin in Warsaw' represents what is excluded (Lenin) so that the image (Krupskaya's infidelity) can exist.
Stories he reaches for 6
Jean-Pierre Dupuy, as EU special envoy, told Žižek that for several hours the Japanese government considered evacuating all 30 million people from the Tokyo area. Used to illustrate that capitalism cannot respond to ecological catastrophe at this scale, market mechanisms are simply inapplicable.
“For a couple of hours Japanese government thought that the pollution will be so strong that they will have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area thirty millions.”
Scientists wired a rat's nerves to a computer, cracked the code for directional movement, and can now steer a living rat like a remote-controlled toy. The crucial finding: the rat still experiences itself as moving freely. Applied: the deepest control leaves subjective autonomy intact.
“A living rat becomes a remote controlled car you can direct her... I would still think that I'm free.”
In his final years Hawking controlled his wheelchair by thought alone after his brain was directly wired to it. Žižek likens this to the German Idealist concept of intellectual intuition (intellektuelle Anschauung) where thinking and acting coincide, and notes the terrifying inverse: if signals go out, they can also go in.
“He just thought intensely move and his wheelchair moved this is almost what in German idealism they called intellektuelle Anschauung.”
Marx wants a wife, Engels a mistress; Lenin wants both, so he can tell the wife he is with the mistress and the mistress he is with the wife, and thereby be free to 'learn, learn, and learn.' Applied: tell capitalists you are with the critics, tell the critics you are with the capitalists, and actually do the intellectual work of understanding the new situation.
“Tell capitalists that you are with critics dissidents and learn learn and learn.”
At a Soviet painting exhibition, a canvas titled 'Lenin in Warsaw' depicts Krupskaya in bed with a Komsomol member. A visitor asks where Lenin is; the guide answers: 'Lenin is in Warsaw', that's why she is doing this here. Used to illustrate Vorstellungsrepräsentanz: the title names the excluded element that makes the image possible.
“Lenin is in Warsaw you know that's why she is doing this here.”
Radio Yerevan is asked whether Rabinovich won a new car in the lottery; the answer is: in principle yes, only it wasn't a new car but an old bicycle, and he didn't win it but had it stolen. Applied here: in principle capitalism is thriving, but with similar qualifications.
“In principle yes only it wasn't a new car but an old bicycle and he didn't win it but it was stolen from him.”
Works invoked 10
Communist Manifesto book
Cited for Marx's prescient description of capitalism's destruction of ancient traditions and hierarchies as simultaneously creating the conditions for freedom.
Lukács's masterwork on the proletariat as subject-object of history; praised as a top philosophical achievement but its eschatological conclusion is rejected as falsified by the 20th century.
Adorno and Horkheimer's radical genealogy tracing technological nihilism to primitive magic; admired as an example of retroactive historical reading, with a mild caveat that they go slightly too fast.
What is Sex? book
Alenka Zupančič's book; described as 'doing very well' and its daring thesis, Lacan re-introduces sexual difference without returning to pre-modern cosmological sexualization, is endorsed.
Žižek's own last book at time of talk; he cites it for the discussion of The Three-Body Problem and Unbehagen in der Natur.
T.S. Eliot's essay on how a true innovation reorganizes the entire tradition retroactively; cited as a 'wonderful idea' supporting Žižek's account of the new.
Left Behind book
Tim LaHaye's novel series on the rapture; dismissed as 'the lowest of the low' aesthetically, but the theological debate it represents is used as a productive political allegory.
Liu Cixin's science fiction trilogy; praised as perhaps the best novel on denaturalized nature (three-sun planet where nature is irregular); cited in Žižek's own Incontinence of the Void.
TV series where 5% of world population mysteriously disappears; contrasted favorably with Left Behind as a 'more intelligent' treatment of the rapture theme.
Julian Assange's book (referred to as his 'wonderful book totally ignored on Google') showing Google is essentially a private counterpart to the NSA.
People invoked 38
Liu Cixin positive
The Chinese science fiction author of The Three-Body Problem is praised as perhaps having the best novel on denaturalized nature; Žižek cites it in his last book Incontinence of the Void.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
Called a great theorist of catastrophes and a friend; his firsthand account from Fukushima (near-evacuation of Tokyo) is used as evidence of capitalism's ecological limit.
Alenka Zupančič positive
Described as a colleague and close collaborator ('my Slovene gang'); her book What Is Sex? and her concept of Unbehagen in der Natur are endorsed; she told Žižek the swimming pool anecdote.
Blaise Pascal positive
Cited for his 'wonderful formula' of the infinite vast universe of modernity, a desexualized grey cosmos, as the background to Lacan's re-introduction of sexual difference.
Explicitly disavowed personally ('I have no sympathy'), but used as a counter-example: his secular nationalist regime was less oppressive for women and Christians than what followed the US invasion.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Subject of several jokes; his 'learn, learn, and learn' slogan is appropriated as the conclusion; cited for the eschatological 'imperialism as last stage' error.
Georg Lukács positive
Called 'maybe the greatest Marxist of the 20th century'; cited for the concept of the proletariat as subject-object of history in History and Class Consciousness, which Žižek then rejects.
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Co-author of Dialectic of Enlightenment, cited for the radical retroactive reading that traces technological nihilism to primitive tribal magic, though Žižek thinks they go slightly too fast.
Jacques Lacan positive
Cited for Vorstellungsrepräsentanz (signifier of a lack), for re-introducing sexual difference into a desexualized modernity, and implicitly for the lesson that emotions cheat.
Stephen Hawking negative
His book arguing philosophy is dead (replaced by science) is called 'philosophically very bad'; however the brain-interface aspect of his wheelchair is used admiringly as an example of intellektuelle Anschauung.
Cited for his warning to the West about the consequences of overthrowing him, and for his role as a rendition partner for Western intelligence services.
Steven Pinker negative
Grouped with Jordan Peterson and Tim Harris as 'new optimists' whose data on declining war and rising prosperity should be listened to but whose overall conclusions are questioned.
Wolfgang Streeck positive
German sociologist and leftist economist; his bestseller on capitalism's disintegration without a leftist alternative is endorsed as making a 'very nice point.'
Raymond Kurzweil negative
Dismissed as a 'new age idiot'; his singularity/collective mind optimism is rejected as cheating by projecting current individual subjectivity onto a post-human future.
Alain Badiou negative
Called a friend; but Žižek disagrees with his term 'nomadic proletarians' for refugees, calling it a false romanticization that amounts to outsourcing the revolutionary subject.
Mentioned as one of the big names now publicly saying capitalism needs some kind of socialism.
Julian Assange positive
Cited approvingly despite 'problematic acts'; his book on Google as a private counterpart to the NSA is endorsed as demonstrating the fusion of corporate and state surveillance.
Mark Zuckerberg negative
Mentioned alongside Gates as a mega-capitalist whose wealth derives from privatizing shared digital infrastructure.
T. S. Eliot positive
Praised as an intelligent conservative; his essay 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' is cited for the idea that a true innovation retroactively reorganizes the entire past.
Richard Feynman positive
Cited for the famous admission that nobody understands quantum physics, just the mathematics works, used to legitimize Žižek's own non-technical engagement with it.
Werner Heisenberg negative
Called 'the bad guy in this case': his uncertainty principle is read as still too epistemological, we cannot measure both, rather than they don't both exist.
Mladen Dolar positive
Named as part of Žižek's 'Slovene gang' working on the problem of moving beyond the transcendental limit without naive realism.
Michel Foucault positive
Appreciated greatly; used to illustrate the refusal to answer naive ontological questions by situating them within a historical episteme.
Peter Sloterdijk positive
Described as a conservative but intelligent friend; cited for the image of global capitalism as a cupola enclosing the privileged quarter of humanity.
Martin Heidegger positive
Extensively cited for Lichtung, Verborgenheit, In-der-Welt-sein, and the question of technology as something we must 'go through'; seen as pointing toward the problem Žižek's Slovene group is obsessed with.
Bill Gates negative
Used as the paradigm case of privatization of commons, his wealth is rent, not profit, and noted for publicly saying capitalism cannot survive.
Author of the Left Behind novel series; Žižek calls it 'the lowest of the low' aesthetically but finds the theological debate it participates in politically interesting.
Walter Benjamin positive
Cited approvingly, 'everybody likes him today', for the metaphor of works of art as photographs for which we lack the developer; used to support the idea of retroactive meaning.
Mentioned as Heidegger's interlocutor in the seminar on Heraclitus where Heidegger raises the question of things in themselves that he had neglected.
Jordan Peterson negative
Grouped with Pinker as a new optimist whose optimistic capitalism-is-working narrative Žižek challenges despite acknowledging some of their data.
Søren Kierkegaard positive
Cited for the insight that if you don't doubt God all the time you are not a true Christian, used to reinforce the political allegory of pre-tribulation rapture.
Niels Bohr positive
Contrasted favorably with Heisenberg: Bohr grasps that particles lack position and velocity in themselves, not just for us, the key move to ontological incompleteness.
Jürgen Habermas negative
Cited as representing the 'easy transcendental' answer to Hawking, philosophy survives as reflexive methodology, which Žižek finds trapped in a circle.
Max Horkheimer positive
Co-author with Adorno of Dialectic of Enlightenment; same assessment, admired for the retroactive historical gesture, slightly criticized for over-reaching.
Karl Marx positive
Žižek identifies as a Marxist but criticizes Marx's eschatological vision of communism as capitalism-without-contradiction; admires Marx's fascination with capitalism's dynamics.
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited for the claim that except anxiety all emotions deceive, and for Unbehagen in der Kultur which Žižek extends to Unbehagen in der Natur.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Background presence throughout; the dialectical method of reversal and retroactivity is implicitly Hegelian; mentioned in relation to negativity and the new.
Immanuel Kant positive
Invoked as the baseline of critical philosophy, pre-Kantian naivety is the error to be avoided; the art curator who says 'Kant is wrong' exemplifies philosophical ignorance.
What it argues
the four limits of capitalismontological incompleteness and quantum physicsbiogenetic and digital control as threat to human subjectivityfailure of Marxist eschatology and the absence of a leftist alternativepolitical correctness as a substitute for structural analysisprivatization of the commons and the shift from profit to rentrefugees and the hidden class dimension of humanitarian discourse
Dialectical moves 7
“The very obstacle to expansion that capitalism introduces is its positive condition—take away the obstacle and you don't get unconstrained dynamics, you get nothing.”
The contradiction internal to capitalism is not an accidental flaw but the very engine that makes it productive; Marx's dream of 'capitalism without its symptom' is therefore incoherent.
“Far from being a sign of capitalism's weakness, crisis is the very water in which capitalism swims—what for other regimes is catastrophe is capitalism's normal state.”
Perpetual crisis is not capitalism's limit but its condition of possibility, which is why successive 'final stage' diagnoses from Marx through Lenin to Mao have always been premature.
“The original work of art is necessarily stupid—it doesn't know what it is doing; it is only later, retroactively, that things become what they were.”
Ontological incompleteness means the meaning of a work is not fixed at origin but constituted retroactively by later readings that the original could not anticipate.
“Those who are truly faithful to Christ are useless—they will not participate in the struggle against Antichrist; it is the doubters and atheists who will do the fighting.”
True belief that exempts one from historical struggle is precisely what disables effective political action; commitment requires doubt, not certainty.
“It is not that we cannot measure both position and velocity—in themselves, particles don't have position and velocity; it is not our limitation but the unfinished character of reality itself.”
The move from Heisenberg to Bohr is a move from epistemological humility to ontological incompleteness: the gap is in the world, not in our knowledge.
“By ruining all ancient traditions, hierarchies, and values, capitalism—horrible as it is—creates the very space for freedom we need to go through.”
Capitalism's destructive power is simultaneously its emancipatory contribution; one cannot bypass it to return to pre-modern communal life.
“The human rat directed by a computer does not experience external control—it still thinks it is moving freely; the threat to freedom is not felt as such.”
The deepest form of control is one that leaves subjective experience of autonomy intact, making it invisible and therefore unresistable.
Claims 16
asserts
Experience is not a reliable measure of justice or ethical validity; as Freud notes, all emotions except anxiety can deceive us.experience as ethical criterion / #MeToo discourse
rejects
The Marxist eschatology of a revolutionary act that overcomes alienation once and for all is falsified by every 20th-century communist attempt.Marxist eschatology / Lukács's subject-object of history
asserts
Capitalism is uniquely dynamic because crisis is its normal condition, not a deviation from it.capitalism's resilience and self-reproduction through crisis
asserts
The privatization of shared digital and software infrastructure by platform capitalists represents a shift from profit to rent and marks a fundamental limit of capitalism.intellectual commons / platform capitalism
asserts
Ecological breakdown constitutes a second fundamental antagonism capitalism cannot resolve because it destroys the impenetrable natural background on which capitalist accumulation depends.ecology as limit of capitalism
asserts
Brain-computer interfaces and biogenetic control threaten to dissolve the minimal distance between self and world that defines human subjectivity.technology and post-human subjectivity
asserts
The permanent production of a left-behind underclass is capitalism's fourth irreducible antagonism.inequality and structural exclusion under capitalism
asserts
Reframing the refugee crisis as a humanitarian problem conceals its class dimension and serves the interests of those in power.refugee crisis / humanitarianism as ideology
rejects
Ancient local cultures are not sites of resistance to global capitalism but fit perfectly within it.multiculturalist anti-capitalism / local cultures as resistance
asserts
The left's turn to moral political correctness signals the absence of any coherent economic alternative to capitalism.political correctness and the crisis of the left
reframes
The real question is not whether we are epistemically limited regarding nature but whether reality itself is ontologically incomplete, as Bohr's quantum mechanics suggests.Heisenberg vs. Bohr / epistemology vs. ontology
asserts
A radical innovation does not merely open a new future but retroactively changes the entire past, making earlier works mean something they could not mean in their own time.retroactivity of the new / T.S. Eliot on tradition
asserts
Marx's vision of communism commits the same error as post-humanist utopianism: imagining the post-capitalist future from the standpoint of our current finitude while assuming its dynamics survive unchanged.Marx's communism as flawed utopia
asserts
The Western interventions in Iraq, Libya, and Syria produced outcomes—Islamic fundamentalism, Christian exodus, Iranian dominance—directly contrary to their stated humanitarian justifications.Western geopolitical intervention / Iraq and Libya
asserts
The correct response to the present moment of deep uncertainty is to 'learn, learn, and learn' rather than claim premature revolutionary solutions.the role of critical intellectuals today
reframes
Philosophy's task is not to solve society's problems but to question whether those are the right problems in the first place.the role of philosophy today / Hawking's dismissal of philosophy
Quotes 12
“The original is necessarily stupid in this sense that they don't know what they are doing—it's only later retroactively that things become what they were.”Slavoj Žižek · retroactivity of meaning / ontological incompleteness of works
“God was a lazy programmer God underestimated us he thought humans are too stupid to move beyond atom so why should I bother there with programming position and velocity—and we caught God with his pants down.”Slavoj Žižek · ontological incompleteness / quantum physics as theology
“Capitalism is approaching final state—then Lenin came: imperialism as the last stage—then Mao: the more capitalism is rotting. And it goes from one to another last stage and the better it is doing.”Slavoj Žižek · capitalism's immunity to eschatological diagnoses
“True intellectuals don't solve problems—they raise the right questions. The first critical gesture is when society wants from you: solve this problem—no, we should first ask: is this the right problem?”Slavoj Žižek · the task of philosophy and critical theory
“What the West invented is outsourcing of torture—it's too dirty for us so we send it elsewhere.”Slavoj Žižek · Western complicity in torture / rendition
“The biggest success of those in power is that they triggered a conflict between two lower classes—immigrants and local poor.”Slavoj Žižek · divide-and-conquer class strategy
“When progressive politics gets moralized—protesting about whatever—it usually means they don't have an alternative global vision.”Slavoj Žižek · moralism as symptom of political bankruptcy
“We cannot say forget about ourselves let's just look at things the way they really are—this is for me pre-Kantian pre-critical naivety.”Slavoj Žižek · rejection of naive realism / transcendental limit
“A living rat becomes a remote controlled car—and the rat still thinks it is freely moving around. That's the deepest form of control.”Slavoj Žižek · invisible control that leaves experience of freedom intact
“Except anxiety all other emotions or whatever you call them cheat you—so experience is not a measure of justice.”Slavoj Žižek · Freudian critique of experience as ethical criterion
“The dream of Marx is to get capitalism without its symptom—but the very obstacle to expansion capitalism introduces is its positive condition.”Slavoj Žižek · capitalism's contradiction as its engine / critique of communist eschatology
“Not only is later time not underprivileged—we are in a much better position; the original is necessarily incomplete and we can understand it better than in its own time.”Slavoj Žižek · retroactivity / against historicist contextualism
Transcript 1 turns
Slavoj Žižek
We had my friends a certain cliche of you students here that mostly relatively well-standing in earlier years this was a rule art curators who just wanted to get some stuff to bluff in their introductions you know I have such a bad experience with these art curators I listened to one of them I left in five minutes after five minutes he said we live in a post-Kantian universe we and he didn't have an idea what is Kant and so on you know so it was that and also if I may put it like this they didn't have respect I don't mean respect towards me I mean look at me how can you if you're not but I mean respect towards the autonomous logic of theory did you also have these experiences how I'm explaining Kant to them ethics my God is this a bad sign no you didn't and they one guy told me one of these curators Kant is wrong I did yesterday an ethical act I didn't experience it like that and I fuck you who cares who are you even you know experience for me doesn't count as and this is my I will go don't be afraid I will not lose my thread this is also one of the problems in the bad version of #MeToo and so on a too direct reference to the experience for example I was one of those who argued okay it's horror I agree Weinstein and so on but I still have some problems did for example Louis C.K. the comedian did he really deserve his entire career to be ruined I don't think so and the counter-answer some women started to shout at me in New York was who am I to who am I to judge them this is how they experience they can also but my point is are they aware that by reasoning like this they are reproducing the worst Cartesian cliché against women that we men can reason while women cannot move beyond their experience you know if a woman experience then my second argument against experience is again it's not a measure of justice they say we maybe a woman experienced this of as utter violence my answer is okay and maybe I'm a racist and if a black man comes too close to me I am disgusted and you tell me okay it's false I tell them fuck you sorry I experienced experience is not and that's also the lesson of psychoanalysis as Freud says except anxiety all other emotions or whatever you call them cheat you know so I think that okay let me not get I will tell you to disappoint you what I plan to do today something extremely simple I will keep my word my promise already to students you will get two very substantial philosophical texts tomorrow to whom should I send them is it you Nemanja is it who you to whom should I send a text so that it reaches you all you okay and then you will be fuck you selling them around for ten Swiss francs or it's okay yeah okay no sorry what I mean is that one that I appreciate very much I think I did relatively great thing about you know all these paradoxes of space twisted into itself in mathematics it's called unorientables the basic simple one is Möbius strip no and then there are three the most complex is Klein bottle how and I try to promote this as a ontological model to cut the long story short and I think you deserve this one and what I promised you one on what I missed on very simple introduction philosophy today and sexual difference but not sexual difference precisely and here I must do publicity for my colleagues Alenka did a book which is even doing very well if some of you are from her class you know What Is Sex? it's the thesis is very daring one it's that we have of course this pre-modern not even ontologies cosmologies which are deeply sexualized usually the origin university some male principle is screwing some feminine principle you know night day night spirit earth light darkness whatever now modernity the big event of modernity is to be the desexualized universe like it's just this grey boring I think Pascal has this wonderful formula this infinite vast universe now Lacan's paradox is that he reintroduces sexual difference but I claim absolutely not in the sense of this ancient re-sexualization and so on and there is a guy here you I mean in a positive way who I hope we will have tomorrow time who asked me precisely this question which is central today and it shouldn't be answered in an easy way I will approach it towards the end of today's talk I already improvised this in my class like what still the role of philosophy today there are good reasons Hawking in philosophically very bad book his one before the last nonetheless makes an apparently convincing case no he says that look what were traditionally big metaphysical questions out of scope of science do we have free will is our universe finite or infinite science is dealing with this problem today it's neurology cognitive sciences which try to resolve this problem of free will it's quantum cosmology which tries to decide is the universe finite or infinite and so on so what remains of philosophy his answer is nothing maybe just some kind of general methodological reflections and so on and so on and I think this is maybe the big tension in modern contemporary philosophy and I think that philosophers then try to isolate or whatever you call it a space which nonetheless remains to philosophy the usual question a reply is he is today's don't underestimate him today's state philosopher I don't agree with him Habermas his idea is a typical very easy transcendental term science can explain everything but it's this basic reflexive transcendental term but it's nonetheless caught in a circle I explain this as a natural process causality but in advance I already have to approach in this scientific way nature it's not simply I look around and nature appears like this nature this is the classical Heideggerian point even nature has already to appear to me or to be conceived in this way to me like that nature is a causal link or whatever even with all the further complexities of quantum physics and so on so the idea is that in order to explain everything maybe even our brain our mind through you already it must be always already here a certain modern scientific approach not reproach sorry approach to nature and this is then the hermeneutic question no like but I see problems here this is the position that many people share even if they appear to be opposed from Heidegger to to deconstructionists and so on the idea is that you never get as it were an innocent view innocent in the sense that not predetermined with our horizon of understanding of nature but then the conclusion and Heidegger was here truly radical he systematically raised the question here what am I saying here is take somebody like Michel Foucault whom I appreciate greatly if sorry if this will be repetitive to you but he if you ask him for example do we have a free will his answer would have been his answer would have been to reject the question in this direct naivety he would have said it doesn't matter what answer you give to raise in its today's meaning this question you already have to be within a certain episteme because in some other approaches to the world such a question is meaningless or is does natural determines is everything naturally determined by natural causality or is something that escapes natural causality of course answer would have been this question itself presupposes a certain approach to reality where reality appears to you as a nexus of causal effect chain of of causes and effects and so on so for him this direct ontological question if you then insist but fuck you but what about really are we free or not he would have refused his this question as too naive for him Germans if you are some Germans here have this beautiful phrase I love it unhintergehbar what you cannot step move behind that the further we can go is this what Heidegger called I'm oversimplifying here Lichtung openness of being the way things appear to us and we cannot step out of it and ask okay but how things really are because precisely how things really are always appears within a certain horizon and so on so but Heidegger not being an idiot he a couple of times very mysteriously he raises the question beginning in his wonderful [unintelligible] where he has all these thoughts about animal lizard stone human beings he says but what about things to put it naively in themselves in the naive sense of of course let's say a table a stone appear to me in a certain way always like this is the great motive already of the early Heidegger you know this In-der-Welt-sein how I always the way I perceive this table is over-determined by my entire practical approach and so on but the problem is but how are things really if I drop that does this table simply continue and so on and Heidegger said and he repeats the same in one of his very last seminar during his conversation with Eugen Fink on Heraclitus he has the same says the same thing he says I totally neglected this and what me my Slovene gang me Mladen Alenka are now obsessed with literally repeatedly approaching this it's precisely how to approach this let's call it limit of the transcendental approach to move beyond but without regressing into the old naive realism no you cannot say forget about ourselves let's just look at things the way they really are this is for me pre-Kantian pre-critical naivety we cannot do it so if you are interested in this I will definitely send you one text on this and then I'm sorry if you know this story but most of you are a new here let me amuse you before I go to my topic with another detail story where I see here the interest of quantum physics why I again and again return to it although I mean I don't understand it but you know all honest scientists in nuclear physics you know one of the most admitted one of the most famous Feynman's sayings is nobody understands quantum physics it's just mathematics works you know but I'm sorry if you know this story but it's beautiful I think that the interest of quantum physics is to elaborate something again a strange connection which in a way Heidegger when he speaks about Verborgenheit openness and high how nature is hidden and so on approaches in a different way namely what fascinates me immensely in quantum physics is this idea of ontologically incomplete universe and I try to elaborate consequences of it what do I mean by this not the simple idea as it is usually misread that we cannot ever know nature fully every idiot knows this quantum physics is much more radical look at the if you know a little bit now I will give you a little bit of my bluffing you know that's the difference between Heisenberg the bad guy in this case and Niels Bohr Heisenberg discovered formulated the so-called uncertainty principle you cannot measure the position and the movement of a particle blah blah but there is a very interesting polemics here between Heisenberg and Niels Bohr Niels Bohr reproached him that he is still too naive Heisenberg basically reduces the uncertain principle to the limitation of our knowledge it is we cannot measure both you have to choose either you measure the position or the movement while Bohr's point is and that's so thrilling that no in themselves they don't have position and movement you know it's not our limitation it's the unfinished character and now of reality itself and now comes my joke repeated thirty times in my in my books I hope you don't know it the idea how to read this came I forgot the name to a vulgar common but it's not it's well-written Introduction to Philosophy where I forgot the name sorry it's quoted in my books where the guy tries to explain this uncertainty principle but correctly read through Niels Bohr through video games and I love video games if you are a philosopher today you should study video games I will immediately tell you why his idea is this one you know that the universe of video games I'm talking about simple video games you know that I am too stupid to play them too old but I enjoy observing my son playing them the world there is not perfectly programmed for example in the back you see a forest but it's not part of the game to go there so it's meaningless to ask oh I want to see those trees there in detail it's not in the program they exist only as this blurred incomplete background or most stupid example the interior of a house if in the game that you are playing it's not part of the rules that you can enter the house then of course why lose time the interior is not programmed you know it's meaningless to and the idea is this one that it's beautiful one that in creating our world but you can give atheist reading to it God was a lazy programmer God underestimated us he thought humans are too stupid to move beyond atom so why should I bother there with programming position and velocity they will never reach that point and we as it were caught God with his pants down you know as you say we went too far we approached this incompleteness of the universe and I think this is something really worth thinking about because it's a if we move beyond these jokes it's a a very complex terms this idea of incomplete universe you find this already in good historical hermeneutics where you know the first stupidity you should get rid of is this obsession with the original context here I like but everybody likes him today so I would it's time that somebody begins to hate him Walter Benjamin when he says he compared works of art with you know this is all the time quoted with a shot on a film for which we don't yet possess the developer how to make the image visible so that he said not only is later time when you lose the immediate contact with the work of art not only is it not not underprivileged like you know this historicist stupidity you have to know all the contexts the original context no I claim works of art in this sense are genuinely open maybe we can understand today some classical work works of art much better than in their original time my great example here is of course think about Shakespeare he has many of these open places in the sense of not completely developed thoughts which only today with later development we can fully understand them so I think that not only are we are we limited because we come late no we are even we are in a much better position the original is necessarily stupid in this sense that they don't know what they are doing it's only later retroactively that things become what they were and this is not only the naive distinction between original and then later readings the original is in itself ontologically incomplete and all that and so on and so on and this opens up immense problems of retroactivity my favorite saying from I always like intelligent conservatives you know T.S. Eliot in his what is the title his best-known essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" or what he has this wonderful idea that the true revolution in the work of art not only opens up a new future it's a radical cut but changes the entire past when you have a new invention all the past appears in a new way and this is the basic paradox of the new how it's not only that it's new with regard to the past it changes the entire picture it changes also the past itself for example Heidegger would have been it his or even in a more vulgar slightly way Adorno Horkheimer "The Dialectic of Enlightenment" where basically it's a radical reductionist reading they trace the origin of our technological nihilism basically not only to ancient Greek but even to the most primitive tribal magic manipulations they see already there the root of technological manipulation I think they go a little bit too fast there but what I think is that in a way this is the true historicity not reducing to historical context but something much more radical and I think we live in such a unique moment today things are changing potentially at least so radically and now I finally I will try to go quickly through it I will would like to do something extremely stupid and naive just condense what I was writing about because people ask me but how can you be a Marxist isn't capitalism thriving everywhere or whatever and in a way I agree with them so I will try just to convince you and I was point I'm not saying anything revolutionary here I don't have a clear idea oh but what we should do what the hell do I know what we should do the only thing I know I hope you will agree with me is that there is a certain Marxist eschatology that I think should be abandoned today what do I mean by this you know Marx liked to complain about complain describe the so-called alienation of history history appears to us individuals as a process out of control you do something with the best intention what kind of a shit comes out of it you get something totally different but the way I read it Marxist Marxist of Marx not Marxist hypothesis was nonetheless that the revolutionary act is the unique act where you overcome this alienation that and this is developed in a top at a top philosophical level with the young György Lukács maybe the greatest Marxist of 20th century in his classical book "History and Class Consciousness" how proletariat working class is the first subject-object of history where to put it in simple terms in a revolutionary act proletariat does something and it knows perfectly what it does alienation is overcome for reasons I don't want to go into I think that if there is a lesson of the 20th century it's that no it doesn't work this way that the same the same logic of alienation you do something it fails you are surprised by the result you have to do it again and so on if this is not a lesson of the 20th century communist attempts then I don't know what it is that the same impenetrability the same unexpected result is everywhere from Chinese revolution to already October revolution go through them so so like what meaning does it have to still claim we need to step out of further of capitalism first at some level I remain admirer of capitalism as Marx was incidentally Marx didn't simply hate capitalism he was absolutely fascinated by capitalism Marx saw very clearly that capitalism was a uniquely dynamic order where crisis was its normal state it thrives through crisis and you can locate this in a very comical detail how you know already Marx was saying late Marx with new imperialist dynamics capitalism is approaching final state then Lenin came and said imperialism as the last stage of capitalism then Mao come like the more capitalism is rotting and it goes from one to another last stage and the better it is doing you know this is quite unique of capitalism how what for other regimes was a catastrophe like permanent imbalance it's the very water in which capitalism swims also what is very important today to insist against I claim false multiculturalist ideas is that horrible as capitalism is precisely by as Marx describes already in Communist Manifesto precisely by you know ruining all ancient traditions hierarchies values and so on it creates the space for freedom we have to go through this and in a totally different way he's not talking about capitalism even Heidegger makes this clear technology is not just modern technology a deviation which no we have to go through it to reach a new beginning so the first even political consequence is don't fall into this cheap idea of local ancient cultures as sites of resistance towards capitalism global capitalism no they fit perfectly global capitalism but let me now begin properly so I will try I'm sorry to be boring for you to address an extremely simple questions are there limits to capitalism or to put it in traditional terms are we today confronting antagonisms for which it is I will be very modest reasonable to conclude that in the long term capitalism will not be able to deal with them and okay here the situation is very complex permit me to quote repeat for the 20th time an old joke that I use all the time but I will give a different twist to it you know I love those Soviet era political jokes and one that I use all the time applying is that joke about you know Rabinovich the Russian Jew figure of jokes Rabinovich the the they ask Radio Yerevan this legendary mythical Soviet radio station which is the butt of Soviet anti-communist popular jokes the whatever you ask this station the answer begins with "In principle yes but" so they ask Radio Yerevan is it true that Rabinovich won a new car on lottery and the answer of Radio Yerevan is in principle it's true only it wasn't a new car but an old bicycle and he didn't win it but it was stolen from him you know and I think if we ask Radio Yerevan is capitalism still thriving today we would have gotten a similar answer in principle yes and I know you know that there is today a whole trend of new optimists Steven Pinker Jordan Peterson Tim Harris who repeat this line again and again and one should listen to them when they refer to data it's interesting how listen we complain all the time wars here but do you know that never in the history of humanity were relatively so little wars than today for the first time in the entire history of humanity obesity is a greater problem than hunger and so on so there are good reasons for but nonetheless why then all the rage against capitalism why this almost panic why and this is a very interesting phenomenon even big names like I quoted them in my class like Bill Gates Elon Musk Mark Zuckerberg all of a sudden they are all saying capitalism cannot survive we need some kind of socialism where does this the usually the reason they give is ecology you know the idea is this one it's a quite consistent nice one that capitalism thrives as long as you have a natural this impenetrable natural background on which you can rely that it will somehow equalize the things like we will we can we can we can spoil ruin poison nature as much as we want but we can rely on mother nature somehow the balance will be re-established the problem is can we still do this and I think quite reasonably they argue we cannot and they are also aware and it's very sad that if all the surviving Marxists it's up to them to point out this that okay there is in a limited amount there is also capitalism which can help us here through taxation and so on to regulate but I think the challenges are simply too strong my eternal example look at you remember now it must be already six seven years ago Fukushima the catastrophe my friend Jean-Pierre Dupuy a great maybe you should invite him if you get him here theorist of catastrophes was in Fukushima as special envoy of European Union immediately still in the midst of a catastrophe and he told me do you know that for a couple of hours Japanese government thought that the pollution will be so strong that they will have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area thirty millions like sorry capital doesn't work here you cannot say okay let's put this on the market which country will tell them we don't have time for that we absolutely need some new type of let's call it new type of collective act so what to do in this contradiction a German sociologist and leftist economist Wolfgang Streeck wrote now a bestseller you may not agree with all of it but he makes a very nice point he said that our era is unique in the sense of till now when there was a crisis of capitalism it was always experienced as an opportunity for the left there was some kind of a less or more radical left waiting them perfect we have a plan how to move it to a higher stage now we have something very sad capitalism is just disintegrating and I'm sorry to tell you I'm still a communist I don't see any consistent leftist project what to do economically do we have an alternative model that's why I think left is getting so politically correct this time in the bad sense of moralism you know you this is one big lesson of politics when progressive politics gets moralized protesting about whatever it usually means they don't have an alternative global vision and so this I think what what makes it so problematic but there are I think to begin the analysis to see clearly the limitation maybe is to refer to I always like this mixture of ideology popular ideology even popular theology and economy did you notice how the motive which I like this theological motive which is now very popular among American Christian fundamentalists of those left behind the idea is there will be soon a rapture all those really close to God will be taken up to Christ and we others will have to fight Armageddon no and you know I love this apparently meaningless debate then I learned that there are four five different schools fighting with each other you have you have the name theological for Armageddon is tribulation the horrible time Antichrist and so on the there is a minority but still the strongest of so-called pre-tribulation rapture they claim that rapture will occur now anytime and then there will be the big catastrophe which will end by second coming on the Christ okay at the end good forces will win but there will be a horrible catastrophe hundreds of millions at least will die and then you have the post-tribulation rapture people who claim no there will be first tribulation we will all suffer there is no easy way out like if you are faithful to God oh you will go to God before why do I find this debate interesting politically it's not as stupid as you may expect because the this the these post-tribulation rapture people point out quite correctly that the those who think rapture usually they talk about five ten percent people disappearing did you see any movies they are lower trash movies and novels you know Tim LaHaye you know his series Left Behind you should read it it's the lowest of the low and then there is a more intelligent one did you see the TV series The Leftovers which deals precisely like five percent of world population disappears nobody knows why and how others deal with it but the idea is this one that instead of preparing you for the fight pre-tribulation rapture people basically tell you if you are faithful to Christ don't worry you don't have to fight you will be safe taken up no and they say no we should fight we could control but I for political reasons although I'm of course an atheist I prefer the nonetheless the pre-tribulation rapture people because you know in tribulation there will be a fight between forces of Antichrist and followers of Christ but those who were not faithful enough to be raptured you know they had their doubts and so on and isn't there a wonderful lesson if you are for pre-tribulation rapture that those people who are really faithful to Christ are useless they will not participate in the struggle and this is the deep insight of truly great theologians Kierkegaard says if you don't doubt God all the time you are not a true Christian and so on you know that in a way the big battle against Antichrist will be won not by the truly faithful they are meek compromised idiots they go up before it's by us who doubt maybe who are even atheists who will do the fighting so but what interest me in this idea of left behind is sorry why is this theme so popular I am tempted to offer a very vulgar materialist Marxist but vulgar but I think it hits a point reading that as usual God is listening to economy you know the isn't the topic of left behind the big maybe fundamental geopolitical and economic fact today as my good friend a conservative but intelligent one Peter Sloterdijk said global capitalism is like a cupola we the privileged are inside it's like seventy-five to twenty-five approximately one quarter of humanity lives in relative welfare and we are not although we see the outside but we are in a way de-realizing it and those are quite literally left behind and there is a tendency in capitalism to produce more and more of those who are simply left behind left out and here it's crucial how we react now I will say to provoke you something which caused me a lot of political troubles but I stick to it the problem of refugees in Europe why what do I find problematic in this moral view refugees are coming are we human or not will we open our borders no I think I distrust this change of a this subtle transformation of a key geopolitical economic problem into a humanitarian question first I think I think that refugees who are coming are not simply I think always that the true tragedy the truly left behind are those who remain there we are all talking about carrying their children in North Africa or whatever what about those who are left behind and we tend to forget that and change it into our humanitarian problem we should ask ourselves how are we complicit in creating the situation there that makes them escape for example to be very blunt I have believe me no sympathy for Saddam Hussein I'm not crazy but isn't this a model or I mean without American invasion of Iraq without the West toppling Gaddafi without Syrian war which incidentally it's purely a proxy war for big powers mid-level big powers around it Saudi Arabia Syria and through them United States Europe Russia and so on look even those who Syrian friends told me even those who started the resistance against Assad which was later taken over by ISIS and fundamentalists they are now on the side of Assad almost almost they say my God what we produced is worse so and with Saddam it's the same he was a nightmare but you know that this is so sad do you know that Iraq and Syria where I don't know if they still are the only two Middle East Muslim regimes Muslim in the sense that population is majority Muslim which were not formally Islamic states they were secular states do you remember how that how he called Tariq Aziz or who Saddam foreign minister he was a Christian and so on Saddam only at the end to get support against Iran started to flirt with Islamism he was always a nationalist patriot and so on so the justification of the invasion of Iraq incidentally Saddam was a nightmare I know details from some journalist of his techniques of torture better not to mention that but there are two facts he did quite a lot with his relatively secular regime for emancipation of women women has all the access to public posts and so on and so on and point two he was not religiously fanatic you have there two millions I don't know how much Christians living peacefully now the main result of occupation of Iraq there are three main results A women are much more oppressed now under Islamic fundamentalist pressure point two the majority of Christians already left the country and I love this you know United States intervenes why to help cleanse the country of the Christians and third point if anything Iran is now a key player in Iraqi politics you see this is a model of how not to do things it's the same with Libya I remember when he was already using losing sorry in an interview Gaddafi said are you aware what you are doing I made a pact with you he was even as you probably know doing dirty things for the West he was receiving rendition prisoners to be tortured for the West and so on you know as they say my friend you know it's not only outsourcing for cheap labor what the West invented is outsourcing of torture always you know it's too dirty for us so we so what I am saying is that the same is happening now not only in Syria but for example remember Yemen it's indescribable what is happening there now there is mass starvation the whole country is being ruined and so on it's indescribable one can see and where are we now are we really waiting again for humanitarian problems flow of immigrants I think that I think that the big temptation here of some of my leftist friends that I don't agree with them is false romanticization celebration of immigrants like here I slightly disagree even with my friend Alain Badiou who coined the term nomadic proletarians you know like but behind this I think there is a terribly weird vision a friend of mine from Finland wrote me an email and then he was so mad at me that we stopped all communication where he said now finally he said the problem in Europe is we are too corrupted there is no revolutionary force now with immigrants we are you know what this means they even want to outsource revolutionary force like we have a good revolutionary theory we don't have revolutionary subject let's import one it's totally wrong perspective refugees are not coming here as a revolutionary force and incidentally I understand that they just want to become normal proletarians you know they are searching for a job to survive and so on and so on but what am I saying is that this operation of changing the problem of refugees into a humanitarian problem you know why it's horrible because you should always bear in mind the class dimension I think this is manipulated by those in power who you know when you are rich you are always humanitarian you always suffer with I know this from my own experience when I'm lucky for long flights to get business or once through upgrading even first class and I'm immediately bored check in you cannot imagine with what sincere compassion I looked at those long queues of economy class people haha fuck you because I am not there you know like and it's the same with this sympathy and you know the biggest success of those in power is that who and again I don't blame them they feel this as a problem immigrants stealing their jobs and so on they triggered a conflict between two lower classes immigrants and local poor and it's a wonderful opportunity for them to play big you see in United States this is always even with many feminists the strategy this hidden class dimension you know like they don't like to say it officially they claim we are always against racism but if you speak with many American feminists it's always in a coded way indicated that Mexicans or the poor redneck working class they are really the ones who beat their wives who I don't know and so on and so on so let me tell you a story which Alenka told it to me I don't think she used her it in her classes I will you know what I will okay I will do something totally crazy because I have the text sorry if I get lost in this what if I send you also the text of what I wanted to deal with today you know it's madness I know you know it's madness but so no no I want to trigger your reaction to this she told me the story Alenka there was a crazy politically correct incident recently I forgot where she knows in some American campus the problem was this one there was one of the rich universities with a swimming pool and some student girls were bathing there laying in sun in their bikinis and a house four-five stores close to it has all those how do you call it when you are restoring the facade and there were some of course Mexican illegal workers there and of course I'm not I don't agree with it I am a feminist but of course in the sense that it's not unexpected that the workers tried to address to the girls what I think at least in Argentina they call piropo el piropo this sexist remarks the girls protested and then you know how this is for me almost a caricature the worst of political correctness you know how university solved it that they established a plastic wall separating the house from the swimming pool so that it was invisible plus they built a kind of a plastic covered tunnel to prevent any chance of the poor workers seeing the girls so everybody was satisfied and so on and so on this is political correctness for me but don't misunderstand me here this is a deadlock situation because what does it work in a certain way if you are a sensitive feminist the girls were right you know they were harassed on the other hand the laborers immediately said which was probably also at least partially true that it's a class dimension it was rich girls horrified at the piropo jokes advances from the poor workers and as one of the workers said if instead of being a working plateau this were to be a balcony of a rich boys club I wonder if the girls would protest in the same way so what's the solution I think that precisely there is no direct solution in the short term we maybe should say okay girls we should protect them but we should be aware that there is also a class injustice in it so you know the problem with this is for me the problem of political correctness it doesn't solve the problem through all those ridiculous plastic walls and so on that's what political correctness is doing you don't solve the problem but okay let's not lose time let me go on very quickly my God I'm afraid even to look at it where I am now time okay I will go quickly through the four points where I see the limit of capitalism today first the commons of culture I will just repeat my old Marxist way I think that the problems that we usually refer to as intellectual property they clearly point to the limit of capitalism at least first on the one hand there is a lot of stealing although I'm for it I mean if you were to check my PC the most widely used website is Pirate Bay of course you know but what I'm saying on the other hand we get this phenomenon did you ask yourself why all these new corporate guys like Mark Zuckerberg Bill Gates and so on are the wealthiest men today where does their money come from it's not classic profit and exploitation it's ridiculous to say that Bill Gates is extra exploiting his workers I think it's a totally different phenomenon what I call the privatization of commons all these new mega-capitalist they privatize something that should be our commons like Bill Gates owns the very tech digital not digital software texture of our communication most of us if I email to you I use Microsoft whatever and so on so I agree with those Marxist economists who claim we are witnessing today a weird return from profit to rent I think the source of the wealth of Bill Gates is we are all paying rent to him rent which enables us to participate in our commons Bill Gates is here when when I will send you the email and so on and so on it's rent and this clearly introduces some kind of irrationality in the sense that even what under normal under quotation marks capitalism we we could consider as rational it's now getting totally crazy if a guy with an invention in his garage can become in one decade or two the wealthiest man in the world it simply means the system no longer functions with all okay I will not go into it in detail this I think is the first limit of capitalism it will and also then finances and so on then the commons of external nature simply ecology I think that there also we are approaching a limit you all heard about Anthropocene no like the new age where we humanity are a geological factor what's so interesting about it is the fundamental paradox in so far as already said nature is a impenetrable background and you can rely on it we can screw it up but nature will somehow re-establish balance we were able to be subjects in the sense of exploiting ruthlessly nature precisely because we became too powerful we humanity all of a sudden discovered our limit and here also I don't want to lose too much time here also Alenka Zupančič who again I prohibited her from being here made a wonderful variation of Freud's term Unbehagen in der Kultur the discontent it's not a good translation the translation English "Discontent in Civilization and its Discontent" it's totally wrong because Unbehagen is not discontent more being out of place uneasiness you don't feel in that today with this Anthropocene it's not just Unbehagen in der Kultur our it's Unbehagen in der Natur also you know like nature itself is more and more denaturalized we are discovering how nature itself is not natural if by natural we mean this regular rhythm seasons summers and so on and here I'm a good multiculturalist in the sense of you know who has maybe the best novel on this I quote it in my last book "Incontinence of the Void" I forgot the name sorry my racism but there is a Chinese science fiction author I draw your attention yeah the how do you call it the "Three-Body Problem" and it's precisely this wonderful idea us and this other planet with three suns where nature is denaturalized and so on so here also I already mentioned the example of Fukushima capitalism can be useful but we will need another approach the I think that we will have to regulate subordinate whatever capitalism next threat in the sense of antagonism which I think it will not be able for capitalism capitalism will not be capable of coming to terms to cope with it is of course the commons of our internal nature cognitive sciences biogenetics and so on and so on are we aware what is already happening there people usually focus too much on this how we are digitally controlled and so on and I boast now ironically you know that three days ago I was in a rich bank and fuck you they treated me much better than you a big Mercedes limousine was waiting at me at the airport taking me to Gstaad from Gstaad a big Mercedes took me here and when I leave two days from now fuck you I will have to travel with that yellow post bus no sorry let's be serious I went there simply to earn some money which I promised you I will spend it to travel around to visit friends and so on I mean for a good cause political and so on but there were some interesting references there two guys one lady one man reported on what is already happening and it's okay this is the usual story Cambridge Analytica story but it's much more radical already and developed so it's true that you know the problem is not only that we are controlled in the sense of what am I thinking the problem is that they are gathering data about us that we don't even know what these data are for example I will not lose your time precious time but just to show how serious the thing in Chinese and when they say Chinese develop this I always suspect that Chinese are a comfortable example they are there you know to distract the attention that we are probably doing the same thing Chinese already developed such an elaborate satellite strategy that you can cover an entire sixty thousand people stadium and you get data about every individual how excited is he in this way this is supposed to be the triumph they only knew that isn't this terrifying that there is a mass murderer on a stadium and they discovered it through this they scanned the whole stadium and each person was they somehow measured the intensity of your excitement whatever they caught him in this way second thing as a British lady of Swedish origins Pippa something I don't know the name who is also a specialist in this told us are you aware and that practically all of the computers and especially flat big big-screen TVs that you use today they also have a camera you are watched and this camera doesn't only register did you watch hardcore pornography or whatever what do you watch no they measure the intensity they have basic algorithms how did you react passionately or not and so on and with today's mega computers you simply have they have enough computing powers to use all this we all already have and this lady gave another wonderful example do you know that the sneakers I don't have them here this was imposed on me by my wife the sneakers most have a tiny chip already in them which reports how much do you walk with what intensity do you walk and so on and so on okay this is the big news but I'm not so much afraid of it I'm sorry if this repetitious for you but it fascinates me I'm much more afraid of something else namely the this idea I developed it already here I think years ago of a direct link between our brain and computers it already it's progressing like crazy you know the look to begin with my usual example you know that Stephen King sorry Stephen Hawking I prefer Stephen King so you know he usually communicated for long years in his wheelchair by he was able to move a little bit one finger no in the last years he no longer needed it his brain was directly wired so for example he just thought intensely move and his wheelchair moved this is almost what in German idealism they called intellektuelle Anschauung where perception and activity coincide this is divine in the sense of you think about something and it happens okay the bad news is of course that if it goes out it goes also in in what way what and this is the new military tactic now I was told by my friends US army Chinese army Russian army they invest like crazy in this how to how to read your mind it's all still primitive but it's progressing tremendously and now I hope you don't know it to give you my final example here of this do you know that they already did now it's very primitive but it's terrifying for me they succeeded it first with rats and from my connections I learned they also are doing it discreetly just you don't read it in the media with humans I was shown a video of a rat running around freely in a cage and but the nerves of the rat were linked to a computer because they broke the code a very simple one of directions run this left right so it's terrifying the rat is running around then you press a button a living rat becomes a remote controlled car you can direct her and as it was hinted at me that's the beauty they did this discreetly on humans they can do it and they asked the right almost okay not philosophical but in that direction question how will a human being experience this will it be oh my god let's example let's see that I am that human rat I walk here around let's say you I give this honor to you you press a button you direct me how would I experience will I experience it the result is very sad it's not that I will feel oh my god a foreign power took over I don't no I would still think that I'm free that I'm freely moving around and so on so I think although I'm against these new age dreams and so on that the way these things are developing something new I don't like to call it post-human because post-human brings Ray Kurzweil and all those new age idiots you know we are entering a new era singularity one collective mind but definitely something which no longer fits our definition of being a human being because being a human being for us means this basic difference I'm here reality is there this minimal distance I think I don't act and this is clearly threatened I'm not here a pessimist I'm not saying the result will be this I share neither the crazy optimism of people like Ray Kurzweil and so on happy new new new singularity and so on they cheat I think when they paint this new collective mind they still write and talk as if somehow we will maintain we will be the same singular individuals but on the other hand I also don't share the simple technological pessimism horrible we will be robots I just insist that and with this I will conclude that we don't know what will be the result I want to keep it totally open you know because you know and here I will be now even critical of Marx you know what is the usual temptation in these situations Heidegger knew this very well and many others we have dreams of immortality and so on eternity but they are all dreams from the standpoint of our finitude and you cannot we cheat the way we imagine immortality it is meaningful only from our temporality and finitude and so the trap of some of these utopians is to imagine post-human subject if we still can use these terms as precisely from the dream of our limited humanity as if we will get that but we will not and where is here critique of Marx I tried to develop somewhere that there is maybe a similar flaw in Marx's approach to communism very intelligent critics showed that Marx's idea was this one if we have an incredible dynamics I simplify it of capitalism but then at a certain point capitalism become obstacle to its own dynamics so you whatever socialize means of production and you get wild expansion outside capitalism I don't think it works I think that the very obstacle to expansion capitalism is its positive condition if you take Marx's dream is to get capitalism without its symptom as it were as if somehow I don't know why in communism this crazy dynamics always further surplus permanent imbalance which is I think clearly specific of capitalism will simply survive in its unconstrained pure form and it's the same problem with this post-humanity we don't know what and as it's clear now I covered briefly these four domains yes the fourth is of course what I began with those left behind new walls new apartheids and so on I think our tragedy today is that we can clearly see that's what even people like Bill Gates and so on see that capitalism at least as we know it today will not be able to cope with it or if it will be able it will be a catastrophe can you imagine all this tremendous thing of digital control wiring our brains to be left to private companies now they will say but we need state control yes but as we learned already now here in spite of his problematic acts I agree with Julian Assange who wrote a wonderful book totally ignored on Google where he shows that Google is basically a private counterpoint to NSA these big corporations are all intensely linked with state apparatus and so on so again we have to break out of capitalism here with biogenetic manipulations again it's nightmare if we leave it to free capital with ecology I don't think you can cope with it in capitalism and so on with capitalism and so on and so on so but then what to do well here I will disappoint you to conclude really now I will all I can tell you is to repeat an old joke that I'm sure most of you heard if from not from me from others but I think it's more than appropriate here you know that eternal joke of mine against Lenin there are so many beautiful jokes in Soviet tradition about Lenin like my favorite is still the old one used in my early book I think whenever I have to explain the the reflexive signifier as the signifier of a lack and so on I always use that I'm sorry if you already heard it even from me in my class you know that wonderful joke on in Soviet Union they have a exhibition of painting and there is a painting titled "Lenin in Warsaw" and on the painting you see Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaya widely fucking a young Komsomol guy and the visitor asks okay but why this title where is Lenin and the guy said Lenin is in Warsaw you know that's why she is doing this here this is what Lacan means by Vorstellungsrepräsentanz something is the title doesn't name the content of the image but that which has to be excluded so that you can get that content okay my final jokes you know it even more you know this eternal you have to know this I think I even used it here already in public classes when I was young even in communist countries we all had as an instigation to us pupils this words of Lenin advice to young people what should you do learn learn learn Uchitsya, uchitsya, uchitsya learn learn and learn so you probably know the joke typical communist they ask Marx Engels and Lenin what do we prefer to have a wife or a mistress Marx more conservative moralist says a wife Lenin sorry Engels more a bon vivant said mistress Lenin says I want both so they are shocked Lenin is supposed to be ascetic revolutionary what is this so they ask him surprised but why comrade Lenin what would you do then and Lenin answers well so that I can tell my wife that I'm with the mistress I can can tell the mistress that I'm with my wife and they ask him okay but what do you do then and he says of course learn learn and learn that's what we need today if wife stands for the traditional order trust in capitalism it will not work so tell your wife that you are tell capitalists that you are with that you are with critics dissidents dissidents today don't really know we don't have a vision so tell them you are with capitalist and learn learn and learn we live in an epoch when new things are happening like what will be this post-human subjectivity we don't know even what is happening socially is today's China still capitalist in what sense we don't know so that's why I'm not here just kissing your ass but I mean it sincerely that's why our institutions like EGS here are so precious because our academia is more and more that's the catastrophe of what in Europe we call Bologna reform streamlined directed in the sense of it must be of some social use to solve real no true intellectuals don't solve problems they raise the right questions they the first critical gesture is when society wants from you solve this problem like typically we have fundamentalist demonstrations whatever help us how to no we should first ask is this the right problem why this problem and so on and for this unfortunately there is less and less space in our official academia and it comes often to the types of institutions like here which are the the only space where you can still raise this type of questions obviously so that's my final message learn now I will be very cynical I go to my mistress and you fuck you learn learn and learn thank you very much thank you thank you thank you
We had my friends a certain cliche of you students here that mostly relatively well-standing in earlier years this was a rule art curators who just wanted to get some stuff to bluff in their introductions you know I have such a bad experience with these art curators I listened to one of them I left in five minutes after five minutes he said we live in a post-Kantian universe we and he didn't have an idea what is Kant and so on you know so it was that and also if I may put it like this they didn't have respect I don't mean respect towards me I mean look at me how can you if you're not but I mean respect towards the autonomous logic of theory did you also have these experiences how I'm explaining Kant to them ethics my God is this a bad sign no you didn't and they one guy told me one of these curators Kant is wrong I did yesterday an ethical act I didn't experience it like that and I fuck you who cares who are you even you know experience for me doesn't count as and this is my I will go don't be afraid I will not lose my thread this is also one of the problems in the bad version of #MeToo and so on a too direct reference to the experience for example I was one of those who argued okay it's horror I agree Weinstein and so on but I still have some problems did for example Louis C.K. the comedian did he really deserve his entire career to be ruined I don't think so and the counter-answer some women started to shout at me in New York was who am I to who am I to judge them this is how they experience they can also but my point is are they aware that by reasoning like this they are reproducing the worst Cartesian cliché against women that we men can reason while women cannot move beyond their experience you know if a woman experience then my second argument against experience is again it's not a measure of justice they say we maybe a woman experienced this of as utter violence my answer is okay and maybe I'm a racist and if a black man comes too close to me I am disgusted and you tell me okay it's false I tell them fuck you sorry I experienced experience is not and that's also the lesson of psychoanalysis as Freud says except anxiety all other emotions or whatever you call them cheat you know so I think that okay let me not get I will tell you to disappoint you what I plan to do today something extremely simple I will keep my word my promise already to students you will get two very substantial philosophical texts tomorrow to whom should I send them is it you Nemanja is it who you to whom should I send a text so that it reaches you all you okay and then you will be fuck you selling them around for ten Swiss francs or it's okay yeah okay no sorry what I mean is that one that I appreciate very much I think I did relatively great thing about you know all these paradoxes of space twisted into itself in mathematics it's called unorientables the basic simple one is Möbius strip no and then there are three the most complex is Klein bottle how and I try to promote this as a ontological model to cut the long story short and I think you deserve this one and what I promised you one on what I missed on very simple introduction philosophy today and sexual difference but not sexual difference precisely and here I must do publicity for my colleagues Alenka did a book which is even doing very well if some of you are from her class you know What Is Sex? it's the thesis is very daring one it's that we have of course this pre-modern not even ontologies cosmologies which are deeply sexualized usually the origin university some male principle is screwing some feminine principle you know night day night spirit earth light darkness whatever now modernity the big event of modernity is to be the desexualized universe like it's just this grey boring I think Pascal has this wonderful formula this infinite vast universe now Lacan's paradox is that he reintroduces sexual difference but I claim absolutely not in the sense of this ancient re-sexualization and so on and there is a guy here you I mean in a positive way who I hope we will have tomorrow time who asked me precisely this question which is central today and it shouldn't be answered in an easy way I will approach it towards the end of today's talk I already improvised this in my class like what still the role of philosophy today there are good reasons Hawking in philosophically very bad book his one before the last nonetheless makes an apparently convincing case no he says that look what were traditionally big metaphysical questions out of scope of science do we have free will is our universe finite or infinite science is dealing with this problem today it's neurology cognitive sciences which try to resolve this problem of free will it's quantum cosmology which tries to decide is the universe finite or infinite and so on so what remains of philosophy his answer is nothing maybe just some kind of general methodological reflections and so on and so on and I think this is maybe the big tension in modern contemporary philosophy and I think that philosophers then try to isolate or whatever you call it a space which nonetheless remains to philosophy the usual question a reply is he is today's don't underestimate him today's state philosopher I don't agree with him Habermas his idea is a typical very easy transcendental term science can explain everything but it's this basic reflexive transcendental term but it's nonetheless caught in a circle I explain this as a natural process causality but in advance I already have to approach in this scientific way nature it's not simply I look around and nature appears like this nature this is the classical Heideggerian point even nature has already to appear to me or to be conceived in this way to me like that nature is a causal link or whatever even with all the further complexities of quantum physics and so on so the idea is that in order to explain everything maybe even our brain our mind through you already it must be always already here a certain modern scientific approach not reproach sorry approach to nature and this is then the hermeneutic question no like but I see problems here this is the position that many people share even if they appear to be opposed from Heidegger to to deconstructionists and so on the idea is that you never get as it were an innocent view innocent in the sense that not predetermined with our horizon of understanding of nature but then the conclusion and Heidegger was here truly radical he systematically raised the question here what am I saying here is take somebody like Michel Foucault whom I appreciate greatly if sorry if this will be repetitive to you but he if you ask him for example do we have a free will his answer would have been his answer would have been to reject the question in this direct naivety he would have said it doesn't matter what answer you give to raise in its today's meaning this question you already have to be within a certain episteme because in some other approaches to the world such a question is meaningless or is does natural determines is everything naturally determined by natural causality or is something that escapes natural causality of course answer would have been this question itself presupposes a certain approach to reality where reality appears to you as a nexus of causal effect chain of of causes and effects and so on so for him this direct ontological question if you then insist but fuck you but what about really are we free or not he would have refused his this question as too naive for him Germans if you are some Germans here have this beautiful phrase I love it unhintergehbar what you cannot step move behind that the further we can go is this what Heidegger called I'm oversimplifying here Lichtung openness of being the way things appear to us and we cannot step out of it and ask okay but how things really are because precisely how things really are always appears within a certain horizon and so on so but Heidegger not being an idiot he a couple of times very mysteriously he raises the question beginning in his wonderful [unintelligible] where he has all these thoughts about animal lizard stone human beings he says but what about things to put it naively in themselves in the naive sense of of course let's say a table a stone appear to me in a certain way always like this is the great motive already of the early Heidegger you know this In-der-Welt-sein how I always the way I perceive this table is over-determined by my entire practical approach and so on but the problem is but how are things really if I drop that does this table simply continue and so on and Heidegger said and he repeats the same in one of his very last seminar during his conversation with Eugen Fink on Heraclitus he has the same says the same thing he says I totally neglected this and what me my Slovene gang me Mladen Alenka are now obsessed with literally repeatedly approaching this it's precisely how to approach this let's call it limit of the transcendental approach to move beyond but without regressing into the old naive realism no you cannot say forget about ourselves let's just look at things the way they really are this is for me pre-Kantian pre-critical naivety we cannot do it so if you are interested in this I will definitely send you one text on this and then I'm sorry if you know this story but most of you are a new here let me amuse you before I go to my topic with another detail story where I see here the interest of quantum physics why I again and again return to it although I mean I don't understand it but you know all honest scientists in nuclear physics you know one of the most admitted one of the most famous Feynman's sayings is nobody understands quantum physics it's just mathematics works you know but I'm sorry if you know this story but it's beautiful I think that the interest of quantum physics is to elaborate something again a strange connection which in a way Heidegger when he speaks about Verborgenheit openness and high how nature is hidden and so on approaches in a different way namely what fascinates me immensely in quantum physics is this idea of ontologically incomplete universe and I try to elaborate consequences of it what do I mean by this not the simple idea as it is usually misread that we cannot ever know nature fully every idiot knows this quantum physics is much more radical look at the if you know a little bit now I will give you a little bit of my bluffing you know that's the difference between Heisenberg the bad guy in this case and Niels Bohr Heisenberg discovered formulated the so-called uncertainty principle you cannot measure the position and the movement of a particle blah blah but there is a very interesting polemics here between Heisenberg and Niels Bohr Niels Bohr reproached him that he is still too naive Heisenberg basically reduces the uncertain principle to the limitation of our knowledge it is we cannot measure both you have to choose either you measure the position or the movement while Bohr's point is and that's so thrilling that no in themselves they don't have position and movement you know it's not our limitation it's the unfinished character and now of reality itself and now comes my joke repeated thirty times in my in my books I hope you don't know it the idea how to read this came I forgot the name to a vulgar common but it's not it's well-written Introduction to Philosophy where I forgot the name sorry it's quoted in my books where the guy tries to explain this uncertainty principle but correctly read through Niels Bohr through video games and I love video games if you are a philosopher today you should study video games I will immediately tell you why his idea is this one you know that the universe of video games I'm talking about simple video games you know that I am too stupid to play them too old but I enjoy observing my son playing them the world there is not perfectly programmed for example in the back you see a forest but it's not part of the game to go there so it's meaningless to ask oh I want to see those trees there in detail it's not in the program they exist only as this blurred incomplete background or most stupid example the interior of a house if in the game that you are playing it's not part of the rules that you can enter the house then of course why lose time the interior is not programmed you know it's meaningless to and the idea is this one that it's beautiful one that in creating our world but you can give atheist reading to it God was a lazy programmer God underestimated us he thought humans are too stupid to move beyond atom so why should I bother there with programming position and velocity they will never reach that point and we as it were caught God with his pants down you know as you say we went too far we approached this incompleteness of the universe and I think this is something really worth thinking about because it's a if we move beyond these jokes it's a a very complex terms this idea of incomplete universe you find this already in good historical hermeneutics where you know the first stupidity you should get rid of is this obsession with the original context here I like but everybody likes him today so I would it's time that somebody begins to hate him Walter Benjamin when he says he compared works of art with you know this is all the time quoted with a shot on a film for which we don't yet possess the developer how to make the image visible so that he said not only is later time when you lose the immediate contact with the work of art not only is it not not underprivileged like you know this historicist stupidity you have to know all the contexts the original context no I claim works of art in this sense are genuinely open maybe we can understand today some classical work works of art much better than in their original time my great example here is of course think about Shakespeare he has many of these open places in the sense of not completely developed thoughts which only today with later development we can fully understand them so I think that not only are we are we limited because we come late no we are even we are in a much better position the original is necessarily stupid in this sense that they don't know what they are doing it's only later retroactively that things become what they were and this is not only the naive distinction between original and then later readings the original is in itself ontologically incomplete and all that and so on and so on and this opens up immense problems of retroactivity my favorite saying from I always like intelligent conservatives you know T.S. Eliot in his what is the title his best-known essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" or what he has this wonderful idea that the true revolution in the work of art not only opens up a new future it's a radical cut but changes the entire past when you have a new invention all the past appears in a new way and this is the basic paradox of the new how it's not only that it's new with regard to the past it changes the entire picture it changes also the past itself for example Heidegger would have been it his or even in a more vulgar slightly way Adorno Horkheimer "The Dialectic of Enlightenment" where basically it's a radical reductionist reading they trace the origin of our technological nihilism basically not only to ancient Greek but even to the most primitive tribal magic manipulations they see already there the root of technological manipulation I think they go a little bit too fast there but what I think is that in a way this is the true historicity not reducing to historical context but something much more radical and I think we live in such a unique moment today things are changing potentially at least so radically and now I finally I will try to go quickly through it I will would like to do something extremely stupid and naive just condense what I was writing about because people ask me but how can you be a Marxist isn't capitalism thriving everywhere or whatever and in a way I agree with them so I will try just to convince you and I was point I'm not saying anything revolutionary here I don't have a clear idea oh but what we should do what the hell do I know what we should do the only thing I know I hope you will agree with me is that there is a certain Marxist eschatology that I think should be abandoned today what do I mean by this you know Marx liked to complain about complain describe the so-called alienation of history history appears to us individuals as a process out of control you do something with the best intention what kind of a shit comes out of it you get something totally different but the way I read it Marxist Marxist of Marx not Marxist hypothesis was nonetheless that the revolutionary act is the unique act where you overcome this alienation that and this is developed in a top at a top philosophical level with the young György Lukács maybe the greatest Marxist of 20th century in his classical book "History and Class Consciousness" how proletariat working class is the first subject-object of history where to put it in simple terms in a revolutionary act proletariat does something and it knows perfectly what it does alienation is overcome for reasons I don't want to go into I think that if there is a lesson of the 20th century it's that no it doesn't work this way that the same the same logic of alienation you do something it fails you are surprised by the result you have to do it again and so on if this is not a lesson of the 20th century communist attempts then I don't know what it is that the same impenetrability the same unexpected result is everywhere from Chinese revolution to already October revolution go through them so so like what meaning does it have to still claim we need to step out of further of capitalism first at some level I remain admirer of capitalism as Marx was incidentally Marx didn't simply hate capitalism he was absolutely fascinated by capitalism Marx saw very clearly that capitalism was a uniquely dynamic order where crisis was its normal state it thrives through crisis and you can locate this in a very comical detail how you know already Marx was saying late Marx with new imperialist dynamics capitalism is approaching final state then Lenin came and said imperialism as the last stage of capitalism then Mao come like the more capitalism is rotting and it goes from one to another last stage and the better it is doing you know this is quite unique of capitalism how what for other regimes was a catastrophe like permanent imbalance it's the very water in which capitalism swims also what is very important today to insist against I claim false multiculturalist ideas is that horrible as capitalism is precisely by as Marx describes already in Communist Manifesto precisely by you know ruining all ancient traditions hierarchies values and so on it creates the space for freedom we have to go through this and in a totally different way he's not talking about capitalism even Heidegger makes this clear technology is not just modern technology a deviation which no we have to go through it to reach a new beginning so the first even political consequence is don't fall into this cheap idea of local ancient cultures as sites of resistance towards capitalism global capitalism no they fit perfectly global capitalism but let me now begin properly so I will try I'm sorry to be boring for you to address an extremely simple questions are there limits to capitalism or to put it in traditional terms are we today confronting antagonisms for which it is I will be very modest reasonable to conclude that in the long term capitalism will not be able to deal with them and okay here the situation is very complex permit me to quote repeat for the 20th time an old joke that I use all the time but I will give a different twist to it you know I love those Soviet era political jokes and one that I use all the time applying is that joke about you know Rabinovich the Russian Jew figure of jokes Rabinovich the the they ask Radio Yerevan this legendary mythical Soviet radio station which is the butt of Soviet anti-communist popular jokes the whatever you ask this station the answer begins with "In principle yes but" so they ask Radio Yerevan is it true that Rabinovich won a new car on lottery and the answer of Radio Yerevan is in principle it's true only it wasn't a new car but an old bicycle and he didn't win it but it was stolen from him you know and I think if we ask Radio Yerevan is capitalism still thriving today we would have gotten a similar answer in principle yes and I know you know that there is today a whole trend of new optimists Steven Pinker Jordan Peterson Tim Harris who repeat this line again and again and one should listen to them when they refer to data it's interesting how listen we complain all the time wars here but do you know that never in the history of humanity were relatively so little wars than today for the first time in the entire history of humanity obesity is a greater problem than hunger and so on so there are good reasons for but nonetheless why then all the rage against capitalism why this almost panic why and this is a very interesting phenomenon even big names like I quoted them in my class like Bill Gates Elon Musk Mark Zuckerberg all of a sudden they are all saying capitalism cannot survive we need some kind of socialism where does this the usually the reason they give is ecology you know the idea is this one it's a quite consistent nice one that capitalism thrives as long as you have a natural this impenetrable natural background on which you can rely that it will somehow equalize the things like we will we can we can we can spoil ruin poison nature as much as we want but we can rely on mother nature somehow the balance will be re-established the problem is can we still do this and I think quite reasonably they argue we cannot and they are also aware and it's very sad that if all the surviving Marxists it's up to them to point out this that okay there is in a limited amount there is also capitalism which can help us here through taxation and so on to regulate but I think the challenges are simply too strong my eternal example look at you remember now it must be already six seven years ago Fukushima the catastrophe my friend Jean-Pierre Dupuy a great maybe you should invite him if you get him here theorist of catastrophes was in Fukushima as special envoy of European Union immediately still in the midst of a catastrophe and he told me do you know that for a couple of hours Japanese government thought that the pollution will be so strong that they will have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area thirty millions like sorry capital doesn't work here you cannot say okay let's put this on the market which country will tell them we don't have time for that we absolutely need some new type of let's call it new type of collective act so what to do in this contradiction a German sociologist and leftist economist Wolfgang Streeck wrote now a bestseller you may not agree with all of it but he makes a very nice point he said that our era is unique in the sense of till now when there was a crisis of capitalism it was always experienced as an opportunity for the left there was some kind of a less or more radical left waiting them perfect we have a plan how to move it to a higher stage now we have something very sad capitalism is just disintegrating and I'm sorry to tell you I'm still a communist I don't see any consistent leftist project what to do economically do we have an alternative model that's why I think left is getting so politically correct this time in the bad sense of moralism you know you this is one big lesson of politics when progressive politics gets moralized protesting about whatever it usually means they don't have an alternative global vision and so this I think what what makes it so problematic but there are I think to begin the analysis to see clearly the limitation maybe is to refer to I always like this mixture of ideology popular ideology even popular theology and economy did you notice how the motive which I like this theological motive which is now very popular among American Christian fundamentalists of those left behind the idea is there will be soon a rapture all those really close to God will be taken up to Christ and we others will have to fight Armageddon no and you know I love this apparently meaningless debate then I learned that there are four five different schools fighting with each other you have you have the name theological for Armageddon is tribulation the horrible time Antichrist and so on the there is a minority but still the strongest of so-called pre-tribulation rapture they claim that rapture will occur now anytime and then there will be the big catastrophe which will end by second coming on the Christ okay at the end good forces will win but there will be a horrible catastrophe hundreds of millions at least will die and then you have the post-tribulation rapture people who claim no there will be first tribulation we will all suffer there is no easy way out like if you are faithful to God oh you will go to God before why do I find this debate interesting politically it's not as stupid as you may expect because the this the these post-tribulation rapture people point out quite correctly that the those who think rapture usually they talk about five ten percent people disappearing did you see any movies they are lower trash movies and novels you know Tim LaHaye you know his series Left Behind you should read it it's the lowest of the low and then there is a more intelligent one did you see the TV series The Leftovers which deals precisely like five percent of world population disappears nobody knows why and how others deal with it but the idea is this one that instead of preparing you for the fight pre-tribulation rapture people basically tell you if you are faithful to Christ don't worry you don't have to fight you will be safe taken up no and they say no we should fight we could control but I for political reasons although I'm of course an atheist I prefer the nonetheless the pre-tribulation rapture people because you know in tribulation there will be a fight between forces of Antichrist and followers of Christ but those who were not faithful enough to be raptured you know they had their doubts and so on and isn't there a wonderful lesson if you are for pre-tribulation rapture that those people who are really faithful to Christ are useless they will not participate in the struggle and this is the deep insight of truly great theologians Kierkegaard says if you don't doubt God all the time you are not a true Christian and so on you know that in a way the big battle against Antichrist will be won not by the truly faithful they are meek compromised idiots they go up before it's by us who doubt maybe who are even atheists who will do the fighting so but what interest me in this idea of left behind is sorry why is this theme so popular I am tempted to offer a very vulgar materialist Marxist but vulgar but I think it hits a point reading that as usual God is listening to economy you know the isn't the topic of left behind the big maybe fundamental geopolitical and economic fact today as my good friend a conservative but intelligent one Peter Sloterdijk said global capitalism is like a cupola we the privileged are inside it's like seventy-five to twenty-five approximately one quarter of humanity lives in relative welfare and we are not although we see the outside but we are in a way de-realizing it and those are quite literally left behind and there is a tendency in capitalism to produce more and more of those who are simply left behind left out and here it's crucial how we react now I will say to provoke you something which caused me a lot of political troubles but I stick to it the problem of refugees in Europe why what do I find problematic in this moral view refugees are coming are we human or not will we open our borders no I think I distrust this change of a this subtle transformation of a key geopolitical economic problem into a humanitarian question first I think I think that refugees who are coming are not simply I think always that the true tragedy the truly left behind are those who remain there we are all talking about carrying their children in North Africa or whatever what about those who are left behind and we tend to forget that and change it into our humanitarian problem we should ask ourselves how are we complicit in creating the situation there that makes them escape for example to be very blunt I have believe me no sympathy for Saddam Hussein I'm not crazy but isn't this a model or I mean without American invasion of Iraq without the West toppling Gaddafi without Syrian war which incidentally it's purely a proxy war for big powers mid-level big powers around it Saudi Arabia Syria and through them United States Europe Russia and so on look even those who Syrian friends told me even those who started the resistance against Assad which was later taken over by ISIS and fundamentalists they are now on the side of Assad almost almost they say my God what we produced is worse so and with Saddam it's the same he was a nightmare but you know that this is so sad do you know that Iraq and Syria where I don't know if they still are the only two Middle East Muslim regimes Muslim in the sense that population is majority Muslim which were not formally Islamic states they were secular states do you remember how that how he called Tariq Aziz or who Saddam foreign minister he was a Christian and so on Saddam only at the end to get support against Iran started to flirt with Islamism he was always a nationalist patriot and so on so the justification of the invasion of Iraq incidentally Saddam was a nightmare I know details from some journalist of his techniques of torture better not to mention that but there are two facts he did quite a lot with his relatively secular regime for emancipation of women women has all the access to public posts and so on and so on and point two he was not religiously fanatic you have there two millions I don't know how much Christians living peacefully now the main result of occupation of Iraq there are three main results A women are much more oppressed now under Islamic fundamentalist pressure point two the majority of Christians already left the country and I love this you know United States intervenes why to help cleanse the country of the Christians and third point if anything Iran is now a key player in Iraqi politics you see this is a model of how not to do things it's the same with Libya I remember when he was already using losing sorry in an interview Gaddafi said are you aware what you are doing I made a pact with you he was even as you probably know doing dirty things for the West he was receiving rendition prisoners to be tortured for the West and so on you know as they say my friend you know it's not only outsourcing for cheap labor what the West invented is outsourcing of torture always you know it's too dirty for us so we so what I am saying is that the same is happening now not only in Syria but for example remember Yemen it's indescribable what is happening there now there is mass starvation the whole country is being ruined and so on it's indescribable one can see and where are we now are we really waiting again for humanitarian problems flow of immigrants I think that I think that the big temptation here of some of my leftist friends that I don't agree with them is false romanticization celebration of immigrants like here I slightly disagree even with my friend Alain Badiou who coined the term nomadic proletarians you know like but behind this I think there is a terribly weird vision a friend of mine from Finland wrote me an email and then he was so mad at me that we stopped all communication where he said now finally he said the problem in Europe is we are too corrupted there is no revolutionary force now with immigrants we are you know what this means they even want to outsource revolutionary force like we have a good revolutionary theory we don't have revolutionary subject let's import one it's totally wrong perspective refugees are not coming here as a revolutionary force and incidentally I understand that they just want to become normal proletarians you know they are searching for a job to survive and so on and so on but what am I saying is that this operation of changing the problem of refugees into a humanitarian problem you know why it's horrible because you should always bear in mind the class dimension I think this is manipulated by those in power who you know when you are rich you are always humanitarian you always suffer with I know this from my own experience when I'm lucky for long flights to get business or once through upgrading even first class and I'm immediately bored check in you cannot imagine with what sincere compassion I looked at those long queues of economy class people haha fuck you because I am not there you know like and it's the same with this sympathy and you know the biggest success of those in power is that who and again I don't blame them they feel this as a problem immigrants stealing their jobs and so on they triggered a conflict between two lower classes immigrants and local poor and it's a wonderful opportunity for them to play big you see in United States this is always even with many feminists the strategy this hidden class dimension you know like they don't like to say it officially they claim we are always against racism but if you speak with many American feminists it's always in a coded way indicated that Mexicans or the poor redneck working class they are really the ones who beat their wives who I don't know and so on and so on so let me tell you a story which Alenka told it to me I don't think she used her it in her classes I will you know what I will okay I will do something totally crazy because I have the text sorry if I get lost in this what if I send you also the text of what I wanted to deal with today you know it's madness I know you know it's madness but so no no I want to trigger your reaction to this she told me the story Alenka there was a crazy politically correct incident recently I forgot where she knows in some American campus the problem was this one there was one of the rich universities with a swimming pool and some student girls were bathing there laying in sun in their bikinis and a house four-five stores close to it has all those how do you call it when you are restoring the facade and there were some of course Mexican illegal workers there and of course I'm not I don't agree with it I am a feminist but of course in the sense that it's not unexpected that the workers tried to address to the girls what I think at least in Argentina they call piropo el piropo this sexist remarks the girls protested and then you know how this is for me almost a caricature the worst of political correctness you know how university solved it that they established a plastic wall separating the house from the swimming pool so that it was invisible plus they built a kind of a plastic covered tunnel to prevent any chance of the poor workers seeing the girls so everybody was satisfied and so on and so on this is political correctness for me but don't misunderstand me here this is a deadlock situation because what does it work in a certain way if you are a sensitive feminist the girls were right you know they were harassed on the other hand the laborers immediately said which was probably also at least partially true that it's a class dimension it was rich girls horrified at the piropo jokes advances from the poor workers and as one of the workers said if instead of being a working plateau this were to be a balcony of a rich boys club I wonder if the girls would protest in the same way so what's the solution I think that precisely there is no direct solution in the short term we maybe should say okay girls we should protect them but we should be aware that there is also a class injustice in it so you know the problem with this is for me the problem of political correctness it doesn't solve the problem through all those ridiculous plastic walls and so on that's what political correctness is doing you don't solve the problem but okay let's not lose time let me go on very quickly my God I'm afraid even to look at it where I am now time okay I will go quickly through the four points where I see the limit of capitalism today first the commons of culture I will just repeat my old Marxist way I think that the problems that we usually refer to as intellectual property they clearly point to the limit of capitalism at least first on the one hand there is a lot of stealing although I'm for it I mean if you were to check my PC the most widely used website is Pirate Bay of course you know but what I'm saying on the other hand we get this phenomenon did you ask yourself why all these new corporate guys like Mark Zuckerberg Bill Gates and so on are the wealthiest men today where does their money come from it's not classic profit and exploitation it's ridiculous to say that Bill Gates is extra exploiting his workers I think it's a totally different phenomenon what I call the privatization of commons all these new mega-capitalist they privatize something that should be our commons like Bill Gates owns the very tech digital not digital software texture of our communication most of us if I email to you I use Microsoft whatever and so on so I agree with those Marxist economists who claim we are witnessing today a weird return from profit to rent I think the source of the wealth of Bill Gates is we are all paying rent to him rent which enables us to participate in our commons Bill Gates is here when when I will send you the email and so on and so on it's rent and this clearly introduces some kind of irrationality in the sense that even what under normal under quotation marks capitalism we we could consider as rational it's now getting totally crazy if a guy with an invention in his garage can become in one decade or two the wealthiest man in the world it simply means the system no longer functions with all okay I will not go into it in detail this I think is the first limit of capitalism it will and also then finances and so on then the commons of external nature simply ecology I think that there also we are approaching a limit you all heard about Anthropocene no like the new age where we humanity are a geological factor what's so interesting about it is the fundamental paradox in so far as already said nature is a impenetrable background and you can rely on it we can screw it up but nature will somehow re-establish balance we were able to be subjects in the sense of exploiting ruthlessly nature precisely because we became too powerful we humanity all of a sudden discovered our limit and here also I don't want to lose too much time here also Alenka Zupančič who again I prohibited her from being here made a wonderful variation of Freud's term Unbehagen in der Kultur the discontent it's not a good translation the translation English "Discontent in Civilization and its Discontent" it's totally wrong because Unbehagen is not discontent more being out of place uneasiness you don't feel in that today with this Anthropocene it's not just Unbehagen in der Kultur our it's Unbehagen in der Natur also you know like nature itself is more and more denaturalized we are discovering how nature itself is not natural if by natural we mean this regular rhythm seasons summers and so on and here I'm a good multiculturalist in the sense of you know who has maybe the best novel on this I quote it in my last book "Incontinence of the Void" I forgot the name sorry my racism but there is a Chinese science fiction author I draw your attention yeah the how do you call it the "Three-Body Problem" and it's precisely this wonderful idea us and this other planet with three suns where nature is denaturalized and so on so here also I already mentioned the example of Fukushima capitalism can be useful but we will need another approach the I think that we will have to regulate subordinate whatever capitalism next threat in the sense of antagonism which I think it will not be able for capitalism capitalism will not be capable of coming to terms to cope with it is of course the commons of our internal nature cognitive sciences biogenetics and so on and so on are we aware what is already happening there people usually focus too much on this how we are digitally controlled and so on and I boast now ironically you know that three days ago I was in a rich bank and fuck you they treated me much better than you a big Mercedes limousine was waiting at me at the airport taking me to Gstaad from Gstaad a big Mercedes took me here and when I leave two days from now fuck you I will have to travel with that yellow post bus no sorry let's be serious I went there simply to earn some money which I promised you I will spend it to travel around to visit friends and so on I mean for a good cause political and so on but there were some interesting references there two guys one lady one man reported on what is already happening and it's okay this is the usual story Cambridge Analytica story but it's much more radical already and developed so it's true that you know the problem is not only that we are controlled in the sense of what am I thinking the problem is that they are gathering data about us that we don't even know what these data are for example I will not lose your time precious time but just to show how serious the thing in Chinese and when they say Chinese develop this I always suspect that Chinese are a comfortable example they are there you know to distract the attention that we are probably doing the same thing Chinese already developed such an elaborate satellite strategy that you can cover an entire sixty thousand people stadium and you get data about every individual how excited is he in this way this is supposed to be the triumph they only knew that isn't this terrifying that there is a mass murderer on a stadium and they discovered it through this they scanned the whole stadium and each person was they somehow measured the intensity of your excitement whatever they caught him in this way second thing as a British lady of Swedish origins Pippa something I don't know the name who is also a specialist in this told us are you aware and that practically all of the computers and especially flat big big-screen TVs that you use today they also have a camera you are watched and this camera doesn't only register did you watch hardcore pornography or whatever what do you watch no they measure the intensity they have basic algorithms how did you react passionately or not and so on and with today's mega computers you simply have they have enough computing powers to use all this we all already have and this lady gave another wonderful example do you know that the sneakers I don't have them here this was imposed on me by my wife the sneakers most have a tiny chip already in them which reports how much do you walk with what intensity do you walk and so on and so on okay this is the big news but I'm not so much afraid of it I'm sorry if this repetitious for you but it fascinates me I'm much more afraid of something else namely the this idea I developed it already here I think years ago of a direct link between our brain and computers it already it's progressing like crazy you know the look to begin with my usual example you know that Stephen King sorry Stephen Hawking I prefer Stephen King so you know he usually communicated for long years in his wheelchair by he was able to move a little bit one finger no in the last years he no longer needed it his brain was directly wired so for example he just thought intensely move and his wheelchair moved this is almost what in German idealism they called intellektuelle Anschauung where perception and activity coincide this is divine in the sense of you think about something and it happens okay the bad news is of course that if it goes out it goes also in in what way what and this is the new military tactic now I was told by my friends US army Chinese army Russian army they invest like crazy in this how to how to read your mind it's all still primitive but it's progressing tremendously and now I hope you don't know it to give you my final example here of this do you know that they already did now it's very primitive but it's terrifying for me they succeeded it first with rats and from my connections I learned they also are doing it discreetly just you don't read it in the media with humans I was shown a video of a rat running around freely in a cage and but the nerves of the rat were linked to a computer because they broke the code a very simple one of directions run this left right so it's terrifying the rat is running around then you press a button a living rat becomes a remote controlled car you can direct her and as it was hinted at me that's the beauty they did this discreetly on humans they can do it and they asked the right almost okay not philosophical but in that direction question how will a human being experience this will it be oh my god let's example let's see that I am that human rat I walk here around let's say you I give this honor to you you press a button you direct me how would I experience will I experience it the result is very sad it's not that I will feel oh my god a foreign power took over I don't no I would still think that I'm free that I'm freely moving around and so on so I think although I'm against these new age dreams and so on that the way these things are developing something new I don't like to call it post-human because post-human brings Ray Kurzweil and all those new age idiots you know we are entering a new era singularity one collective mind but definitely something which no longer fits our definition of being a human being because being a human being for us means this basic difference I'm here reality is there this minimal distance I think I don't act and this is clearly threatened I'm not here a pessimist I'm not saying the result will be this I share neither the crazy optimism of people like Ray Kurzweil and so on happy new new new singularity and so on they cheat I think when they paint this new collective mind they still write and talk as if somehow we will maintain we will be the same singular individuals but on the other hand I also don't share the simple technological pessimism horrible we will be robots I just insist that and with this I will conclude that we don't know what will be the result I want to keep it totally open you know because you know and here I will be now even critical of Marx you know what is the usual temptation in these situations Heidegger knew this very well and many others we have dreams of immortality and so on eternity but they are all dreams from the standpoint of our finitude and you cannot we cheat the way we imagine immortality it is meaningful only from our temporality and finitude and so the trap of some of these utopians is to imagine post-human subject if we still can use these terms as precisely from the dream of our limited humanity as if we will get that but we will not and where is here critique of Marx I tried to develop somewhere that there is maybe a similar flaw in Marx's approach to communism very intelligent critics showed that Marx's idea was this one if we have an incredible dynamics I simplify it of capitalism but then at a certain point capitalism become obstacle to its own dynamics so you whatever socialize means of production and you get wild expansion outside capitalism I don't think it works I think that the very obstacle to expansion capitalism is its positive condition if you take Marx's dream is to get capitalism without its symptom as it were as if somehow I don't know why in communism this crazy dynamics always further surplus permanent imbalance which is I think clearly specific of capitalism will simply survive in its unconstrained pure form and it's the same problem with this post-humanity we don't know what and as it's clear now I covered briefly these four domains yes the fourth is of course what I began with those left behind new walls new apartheids and so on I think our tragedy today is that we can clearly see that's what even people like Bill Gates and so on see that capitalism at least as we know it today will not be able to cope with it or if it will be able it will be a catastrophe can you imagine all this tremendous thing of digital control wiring our brains to be left to private companies now they will say but we need state control yes but as we learned already now here in spite of his problematic acts I agree with Julian Assange who wrote a wonderful book totally ignored on Google where he shows that Google is basically a private counterpoint to NSA these big corporations are all intensely linked with state apparatus and so on so again we have to break out of capitalism here with biogenetic manipulations again it's nightmare if we leave it to free capital with ecology I don't think you can cope with it in capitalism and so on with capitalism and so on and so on so but then what to do well here I will disappoint you to conclude really now I will all I can tell you is to repeat an old joke that I'm sure most of you heard if from not from me from others but I think it's more than appropriate here you know that eternal joke of mine against Lenin there are so many beautiful jokes in Soviet tradition about Lenin like my favorite is still the old one used in my early book I think whenever I have to explain the the reflexive signifier as the signifier of a lack and so on I always use that I'm sorry if you already heard it even from me in my class you know that wonderful joke on in Soviet Union they have a exhibition of painting and there is a painting titled "Lenin in Warsaw" and on the painting you see Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaya widely fucking a young Komsomol guy and the visitor asks okay but why this title where is Lenin and the guy said Lenin is in Warsaw you know that's why she is doing this here this is what Lacan means by Vorstellungsrepräsentanz something is the title doesn't name the content of the image but that which has to be excluded so that you can get that content okay my final jokes you know it even more you know this eternal you have to know this I think I even used it here already in public classes when I was young even in communist countries we all had as an instigation to us pupils this words of Lenin advice to young people what should you do learn learn learn Uchitsya, uchitsya, uchitsya learn learn and learn so you probably know the joke typical communist they ask Marx Engels and Lenin what do we prefer to have a wife or a mistress Marx more conservative moralist says a wife Lenin sorry Engels more a bon vivant said mistress Lenin says I want both so they are shocked Lenin is supposed to be ascetic revolutionary what is this so they ask him surprised but why comrade Lenin what would you do then and Lenin answers well so that I can tell my wife that I'm with the mistress I can can tell the mistress that I'm with my wife and they ask him okay but what do you do then and he says of course learn learn and learn that's what we need today if wife stands for the traditional order trust in capitalism it will not work so tell your wife that you are tell capitalists that you are with that you are with critics dissidents dissidents today don't really know we don't have a vision so tell them you are with capitalist and learn learn and learn we live in an epoch when new things are happening like what will be this post-human subjectivity we don't know even what is happening socially is today's China still capitalist in what sense we don't know so that's why I'm not here just kissing your ass but I mean it sincerely that's why our institutions like EGS here are so precious because our academia is more and more that's the catastrophe of what in Europe we call Bologna reform streamlined directed in the sense of it must be of some social use to solve real no true intellectuals don't solve problems they raise the right questions they the first critical gesture is when society wants from you solve this problem like typically we have fundamentalist demonstrations whatever help us how to no we should first ask is this the right problem why this problem and so on and for this unfortunately there is less and less space in our official academia and it comes often to the types of institutions like here which are the the only space where you can still raise this type of questions obviously so that's my final message learn now I will be very cynical I go to my mistress and you fuck you learn learn and learn thank you very much thank you thank you thank you