Screening Thought
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2011-05-04 · 1:33:47 · 14,596 words
ideologycinema-art-culturepsychoanalysishegel-dialecticsliberalism-political-correctnessgeopolitics-warphilosophy-generalsubjectivity
Žižek appears at the ICA in conversation with Paul Taylor (author of 'Žižek and the Media') following a YouTube clip of a shallow TV interview. The discussion ranges across ideology in the media, the structural exclusion of serious thought from public discourse, the functioning of authority in the postmodern era, and film/TV as ideological symptom. Žižek also develops sustained philosophical digressions on Hegelian dialectics (coffee without cream/milk, the Montenegro glass), the psychoanalytic logic of objet petit a, and the ethics of truth as painful encounter.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 19
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “postmodern tolerant father”
The father who offers the child a fake free choice ('you should only visit grandma if you really want to'), which covertly issues a stronger injunction than direct authority, you must not only obey but also enjoy it.
Implied in the discussion of hedonism: pleasures must be pursued in a regulated, health-conscious, constraint-laden way, so the freedom to enjoy paradoxically generates more regulation than old-fashioned repression.
Safe sex as the sexual entry in the series of things deprived of their substance, enjoyment neutralised of risk/otherness.
as “decaffeinated enjoyment”
The contemporary logic of having everything in a depotentiated form deprived of its substance, coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, sex without risk, epitomised by the chocolate laxative.
The Colin Powell doctrine of zero-casualty high-tech military intervention as the geopolitical version of decaffeinated enjoyment, war deprived of its dangerous substance.
as “subject of enunciation / subject of the enunciated”
Lacanian distinction invoked by Paul Taylor to frame his personal critique of British media gatekeeping as a positional, not universal, truth.
Žižek's pun on the military-industrial complex to name the media establishment's structural exclusion of serious thought, 'non-complex' because it operates by enforced inanity rather than sophisticated conspiracy.
as “Je sais bien, mais quand même”
The fetishist disavowal formula ('I know very well, but nonetheless') applied by Paul Taylor to media complicity: journalists know perfectly well but go on anyway.
Eric Santner's term adopted by Žižek for Reagan as the first president whose authority rests not on paternal law but on self-deprecating performance of stupidity, power that works by mocking itself.
as “Isolierung (isolation)”
The Freudian mechanism by which an event is reported but stripped of its proper political resonance so that it fails to 'click', Žižek uses it to name the media technique of soft censorship through contextual deprivation.
The operative force of a symbolic act or fact; Žižek notes that media isolation deprives reported events of their symbolic efficiency so they register but produce no consequence.
as “hysterical resistance”
King George VI's stutter read by Žižek as a hysterical, and in that sense progressive, refusal to assume the idiotic symbolic role of king; the therapist's job is to crush this resistance.
The Hegelian operation demonstrated by the coffee-without-cream/milk exchange: negating a negation does not return you to a simple positive but produces a third marked position.
as “coffee without cream / coffee without milk”
Žižek's signature example, from Lubitsch's Ninotchka via Alenka Zupančič, demonstrating that determinate negation is not the same as absence, the customer who wants coffee-without-cream is NOT asking for the same thing as coffee-without-milk, because the negativity itself is inscribed.
The supplementary object-cause of desire that coffee needs in order to be fully coffee; the logic of the 'X without Y' series requires the structure of objet a, the thing that is never fully itself but needs an external supplement.
Žižek's tripartite taxonomy: idiots take everything literally (missing the symbolic dimension); morons fully identify with the symbolic order (the big Other); imbeciles occupy the interesting middle, they know there is no big Other but must still relate to it, exemplified by Kafka.
as “big Other”
The symbolic order / guarantee invoked in the contrast between morons (who fully rely on the big Other) and imbeciles (who know there is no big Other but must still relate to it).
The Basque linguistic find that 'to fall in love' literally means 'to be injured by love', used to illustrate the structure of truth as painful external encounter against the ideology of inner authenticity.
Against self-actualization ideology, Žižek argues that truth is always painful, you are 'injured by truth', as in the Basque expression for falling in love, and requires an external, disturbing encounter, not inner authenticity.
Stories he reaches for 9
In Lubitsch's Ninotchka (found by Alenka Zupančič), a customer orders coffee without cream; the waiter says they have no cream but can offer coffee without milk, demonstrating that the negated element is inscribed in the identity of the desire.
“Sorry but we have run out of cream but we still have milk. Can I then bring you coffee without milk?”
In Brassed Off, a woman invites Ewan McGregor up for coffee; he says he doesn't like coffee; she says she has none. The double negation, offer a pretext, then remove the pretext, is a perfectly direct sexual invitation without any explicit content, illustrating the logic of objet a.
“would you like to come up for a coffee. He says yeah, but there is one problem I don't like coffee, she says no problem I don't have any.”
The authoritarian father says 'you have to visit grandma', resistible but honest. The tolerant father says 'only go if you really want to', which every non-idiot child reads as a stronger covert command to obey AND enjoy.
“you know how much your grandmother loves you, but nonetheless, you should only visit her if you really want to”
The Chinese Ministry of Culture formally banned films and TV stories about time travel and alternate history on the grounds they 'introduce frivolity into serious historical matters', illustrating how those in power fear even fictional alternative realities.
“prohibited all the movies or TV stories which deal with time travel and alternate history… introduce frivolity into serious historical matters”
A series of contemporary products/doctrines that offer the form of an experience deprived of its dangerous substance, the logic of having it all in a reduced form.
“You can have it all, but in a reduced form deprived of its substance.”
The first Bond film without a sex scene at the end is read as symptom of a narcissistic retreat from the traumatic openness of erotic encounter, paralleling the Dan Brown film adaptations which delete the sex present in the novels.
“It's the first James Bond film with no sex.”
A chocolate-flavoured laxative bought in California epitomises the logic of decaffeinated enjoyment, you get the form of the pleasure (chocolate) combined with its exact opposite effect.
“the ultimate, if you ask me… a chocolate laxative. You know, chocolate usually supposed to give you constipation.”
The Watergate film appears to expose corruption but its real ideological message is: look how great our society is, two ordinary journalists can bring down the president, which diverts attention from systemic questions.
“my god, what a great society we live in where look, two ordinary guy journalists can overthrow the mightiest man in the world”
George VI's stutter is a hysterical, progressive resistance to assuming the idiotic role of king. The speech therapist's function is to destroy this resistance so the king can perform his symbolic role, presented by the film as triumph but readable as tragedy.
“his stuttering is a hysterical in a progressive good sense resistance to like sorry it's too stupid for me I cannot take that seriously”
Works invoked 23
Ninotchka film
Lubitsch film containing the waiter's coffee-without-cream/without-milk exchange, discovered by Alenka Zupančič, that Žižek uses to illustrate Hegelian determinate negation.
The Da Vinci Code film
The film removes the sex present in Dan Brown's novel, exemplifying Hollywood's new tendency to censor rather than add sex.
Brassed Off film
Contains the coffee-without-coffee erotic invitation scene (Ewan McGregor / upper-class accountant) that illustrates the objet a logic of double negation.
Quantum of Solace film
Politically progressive (exposes a US defence company staging false-flag terrorism) but symptomatically notable as the first Bond film with no sex scene at the end, illustrating narcissistic retreat from erotic encounter.
Sophie Fiennes' film with Žižek; discussed as context for the forthcoming Pervert's Guide to Ideology.
To Be or Not to Be film
Žižek's favourite Lubitsch film, mentioned as the Ljubljana school's preferred entry in his oeuvre.
The Lost Symbol book
Candidate for worst book, notable for the complete absence of sexual tension between its protagonists, further evidence of narcissistic avoidance.
Documentary in progress with Sophie Fiennes; a Channel 4 executive suggested renaming it to remove 'ideology', itself an ideological act.
Used as a paradigm of liberal ideology disguised as systemic critique, it makes audiences feel good about the system by staging individual corruption being corrected.
24 tv
Praised as genuinely progressive Hollywood for its refusal to resolve the ethical deadlock, Jack Bauer is broken, the liberal president admits inconsistency; no heroic right-wing or liberal message.
The King's Speech film
Read as a reactionary film presenting the therapeutic normalisation of hysterical resistance to symbolic investiture as triumphant.
Black Swan film
Reactionary film reproducing the myth that women who fully commit to a public career pay with death, a predicament never imposed on male protagonists.
Cited as part of the reactionary cinematic tradition requiring women to choose between voice/career and life.
Žižek's own book, framed as an attempt to make Lacan accessible to everyone rather than primarily a book about Christianity.
Žižek's book in which he discussed DVD bloopers and the 'making of' as a fantasy structure; cited by an audience member.
One-Dimensional Man book
Marcuse's book cited by Paul Taylor for the observation that the unrealistic sound of utopian propositions reflects the strength of the forces blocking their realisation.
The Piano Teacher film
Haneke film based on Jelinek; Žižek initially misread the ending as tragic (male chauvinism), but corrected himself, the wound is liberatory, like Fight Club's catharsis.
The other Bertolucci film Žižek would 'burn' on the same grounds, sex plus boredom mistaken for artistic depth.
Jean-Claude Milner's book whose antisemitic argument Žižek was ironing summarising and for which he was falsely accused of endorsing.
Tristram Hunt's book, mentioned by Paul Taylor in context of Hunt's hypocritical class politics.
Sheltering Sky film
One of the two Bertolucci films Žižek would 'burn', mistakes soft-core pornography interspersed with pretentious boredom for high art.
Paul Taylor names it as top television (low culture he loves); Žižek endorses the taste for 'real films for real people' over politically correct art-house.
Žižek and the Media book
Paul Taylor's book on Žižek; Žižek expresses genuine gratitude and mild self-deprecating embarrassment at being taken seriously enough to merit it.
People invoked 28
Franz Kafka positive
Exemplary 'imbecile' (in Žižek's positive sense): neither fully relying on the Jewish symbolic tradition nor ignoring it, but relating to it at a productive weird distance.
Paul Taylor positive
Author of Žižek and the Media; the interlocutor for the evening; Žižek expresses genuine gratitude for the book.
Richard Nixon positive
Žižek defends Nixon as more leftist than Kennedy by social spending metrics and as the last authentic Oedipal authority figure.
Saroj Giri positive
Indian friend and critic who pointed Žižek to the Nepalese Maoist example of how leftist sincerity-obsession is counterproductive.
Sophie Fiennes positive
Director of Pervert's Guide to Cinema and the forthcoming Pervert's Guide to Ideology; Žižek jokes about her 'feminist betrayal' (pregnancy delaying the project).
Mahatma Gandhi positive
Cited as more genuinely violent than Hitler, Gandhi at least tried to disrupt the functioning of the British state, whereas Hitler's mass murder avoided structural transformation.
Alenka Zupančič positive
Ljubljana school colleague who discovered the Ninotchka coffee-without-cream/milk exchange and wrote a text on it; brought it to Žižek's attention.
Silvio Berlusconi positive
Cited as proof that the clown-jester mode of authority is not harmless, Berlusconi is laughed at as a jester but governs with an iron fist.
Alain de Botton negative
Exemplar of the 'public wisdom' brand of popularising philosophy that Žižek finds ideologically complicit and intellectually shallow.
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Paul Taylor cites Adorno's essay 'Resignation', 'when the doors are barricaded, it's doubly important that thought not be interrupted', to defend serious philosophical engagement. Žižek also distanced himself from a simple Adorno-style high/low culture critique.
Jacques Lacan positive
Described as the core theoretical framework of The Puppet and the Dwarf; Žižek defends his accessibility against the charge of difficulty.
Gilles Deleuze positive
Cited for the observation that thinking is painful, 'you think against the spontaneity of your mind', and implicitly for being excluded from mainstream British media.
Ralph Fiennes positive
Told Žižek that DVD bloopers and deleted scenes are now pre-planned, used as evidence that the 'authentic backstage' is itself staged.
Alain Badiou positive
Cited for his argument on narcissistic avoidance of erotic encounter and for finding the dating-agency ad promising 'love without the fall'.
Jean-Claude Milner negative
Žižek was misquoted as endorsing Milner's argument (from Criminal Tendencies of Contemporary Democratic Europe) that European antisemitism targets Jews as obstacles to EU dissolution; Žižek was in fact summarising Milner ironically.
Adolf Hitler negative
Žižek argues Hitler was 'not violent enough' in the structural sense: he killed millions because he was afraid to do the real change (in relations of production) that would have mattered.
Mladen Dolar positive
Named as part of the Ljubljana school alongside Žižek and Zupančič who collectively made a self-critical turn toward Lubitsch over Hitchcock.
Elfriede Jelinek positive
Author of the novel on which Haneke's The Piano Teacher is based; Žižek initially misread the ending as tragic but was corrected by friends who knew Jelinek.
Ernst Lubitsch positive
The Ljubljana school made a self-critical move to take Lubitsch as seriously as Hitchcock; To Be or Not to Be is his favourite Lubitsch; Ninotchka provides the key coffee-without-cream dialectical example.
Bernardo Bertolucci negative
Žižek nominates Sheltering Sky and Last Tango in Paris as films he would metaphorically burn, they mistake soft-core pornography interspersed with boredom for high art.
Eric Santner positive
Credited with coining 'post-Oedipal president' as a characterisation of Reagan.
Krzysztof Kieślowski negative
The Double Life of Véronique cited as part of the reactionary cinematic tradition requiring women to choose between career/voice and life.
Hannah Arendt positive
Cited for her analysis of Nazi 'heroism' as actually serving petit-bourgeois commercial interests, used to argue Hitler was no Byronesque hero of evil.
Herbert Marcuse positive
Paul Taylor quotes One-Dimensional Man: 'the unrealistic sound of these propositions is indicative not of their utopian character but the strength of the forces preventing their realization.'
Žižek quips that Groys is 'more crazy than me', endorsing him as a fellow maverick thinker.
Michael Haneke positive
Director of The Piano Teacher, film discussed in the context of feminine liberation misread by male chauvinism as self-destruction.
Ludwig Wittgenstein positive
Cited as a great 'idiot' in the positive sense, one who takes things absolutely literally, missing the conventional symbolic register, which Žižek treats as philosophically productive.
Ronald Reagan positive
Not an admirer of Reagan, but treats his presidency as intellectually significant: the first post-Oedipal president who introduced self-mocking stupidity as a mode of authority.
What it argues
structural exclusion of serious thought from mainstream mediapostmodern authority and the tolerant fatherhedonism as disguised hyper-regulationHegelian negation of negation via the coffee-without-cream/milk exampleideology embedded in Oscar-winning films (The King's Speech, Black Swan)the philosopher as clown or 'deadly jester'truth as painful encounter versus self-actualization ideology
Dialectical moves 9
“The apparent free choice of the tolerant postmodern father secretly contains an even stronger, much stronger order than the old authoritarian 'you have to go'.”
Apparent permissiveness is the negation that intensifies the prohibition, you must not only comply but enjoy it.
“The final outcome of this so-called hedonism is that our lives are more regulated than ever.”
Radical self-pleasuring flips into hyper-disciplined management of the body, libertinism is its own asceticism.
“In Gandhi is more violent than Hitler — Gandhi at least tried to stop the functioning of the British state, while Hitler killed millions because he was afraid to do a real structural change.”
True violence is systemic disruption; spectacular mass murder is a conservative strategy to avoid genuine transformation.
“It's the first time they said 'don't be deceived by this clownish surface, behind it there is a deadly dangerous corruptive message' — being taken seriously as a threat is preferable to being dismissed as a harmless jester.”
The shift from 'amusing clown' to 'deadly jester' marks the moment critical thought begins to register as a genuine danger.
“The King's Speech: the stuttering is a hysterical, in a progressive good sense, resistance to playing the role — and the therapist's function is to crush it so the king can be stupid enough to identify with his role.”
Cinematic 'triumph over disability' is really the destruction of resistance to symbolic investiture.
“Coffee without cream is not the same as coffee without milk — the negated supplement is inscribed in the identity of the desire; you don't just want plain coffee, you want coffee-without-something.”
Determinate negation produces a different object from simple absence; negativity is constitutive, not merely subtractive.
“The Montenegro man puts both a full and an empty glass on his night table — the absence itself has to be represented, marked by an empty glass.”
Absence must be positively inscribed; Hegelian dialectics requires that nothingness occupy a distinct position.
“The journalist feared leaving because everything would fall apart, and was even more afraid when Hearst said nobody would notice his absence.”
Both outcomes of the same fear confirm the fear, negating the reason reinforces rather than dissolves the affect.
“Truth is not deep inside you — if I go deeply into myself I find nothing interesting. Truth is like love: you are by definition always injured by truth.”
The ideology of inner authenticity is inverted: truth is not the discovery of a pre-existing self but a violent encounter from without.
Claims 20
asserts
Apparent tolerance (the postmodern father's 'free choice') conceals a stronger command than overt authoritarian prohibition.postmodern authority / tolerance
asserts
Contemporary hedonism produces more regulation than traditional repression, because pleasure must be pursued in the 'correct' healthy, non-harassing form.consumer hedonism / biopolitics
asserts
Nixon was, measured by social spending, more leftist than Kennedy, and his fall was the last authentic Oedipal fall of genuine authority.Nixon / American presidency
asserts
All the President's Men is ideology at its purest: by staging individual corruption exposed by brave journalists it implies the system is basically sound and self-correcting.All the President's Men / liberal media ideology
asserts
Anti-capitalist moralism in the media — exposing individual corporate wrongdoing — is the most insidious ideological operation because it forecloses systemic critique.media anti-capitalism / investigative journalism
asserts
The media's soft censorship works not through lies but through Isolierung — events are reported but deprived of their political resonance so they fail to click.media ideology / structural exclusion
asserts
The Western left's obsession with the sincerity of NATO's intervention in Libya is a sign of deep decadence; the only relevant question is the political effect of arms on power relations.Libya / leftist moralism
asserts
The King's Speech is reactionary because it presents the crushing of hysterical resistance to symbolic investiture as a heartwarming therapeutic achievement.The King's Speech / ideology in film
asserts
Black Swan is reactionary because it reproduces the old myth that women who fully dedicate themselves to a public career pay with death — a logic never applied to men.Black Swan / gender ideology
asserts
The last two seasons of 24 are genuinely progressive Hollywood because they offer no uplifting resolution — both the right-wing torturer (Jack Bauer) and the liberal president end in total ethical deadlock.24 / Hollywood ideology
asserts
Gandhi was more violent than Hitler in the only sense that matters: he was willing to actually disrupt the functioning of state and production, whereas Hitler killed millions precisely to avoid a real structural change.Hitler / violence and revolution
asserts
Reagan's presidency introduced a new mode of post-Oedipal authority in which power functions by performing its own stupidity, making cynical self-mockery the mechanism of governance.Reagan / postmodern authority
asserts
The ideology of authentic self-actualization ('be yourself') is the dominant ideological form today, and it is directly opposed to the Judeo-Christian-Muslim ethical tradition of overcoming yourself.self-actualization ideology / religion and ethics
asserts
When media takes itself seriously it is ideologically more dangerous than when it is transparently shallow, because the serious register conceals its mechanisms.media seriousness / ideology
asserts
Hollywood is now deleting sex rather than adding it (Dan Brown adaptations, Quantum of Solace), reflecting a narcissistic retreat from the traumatic openness of erotic encounter.Hollywood / sexuality and narcissism
rejects
Lacan's difficulty is class propaganda by the enemy — Lacan should be accessible even to one's grandmother.Lacan's alleged inaccessibility
asserts
Israel's Tel Aviv liberal elite uses settler violence to do the 'dirty job' and then periodically castigates settlers, maintaining legal face while the systematic dispossession continues.Israeli politics / settler violence
asserts
The settler violence against Palestinian farmers is reported in mainstream sources (New York Times, Time) but rendered ideologically invisible through Isolierung.Palestine / media Isolierung
asserts
Coffee-without-cream is NOT the same as coffee-without-milk, because the negativity is inscribed in the identity of the desire — the same plain black coffee is a different object depending on what was negated.Hegelian dialectics / determinate negation
asserts
All thinking requires an initial obscenity or disturbing element to lower ideological defences; jokes are not mere packaging but the condition of philosophical thought.philosophy / humor and thought
Quotes 15
“Trying to live healthy is killing me.”Slavoj Žižek · hedonism as hyper-regulation
“You can have it all, but in a reduced form deprived of its substance.”Slavoj Žižek · decaffeinated enjoyment
“As a Marxist, if somebody tells that Lacan is difficult, this is class propaganda by the enemy.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacan's difficulty as ideological mystification
“It's not only you have to visit your grandmother, but you have to like it.”Slavoj Žižek · postmodern tolerant father / super-ego injunction to enjoy
“Where does ideology enter? Well ideology enters with just ask yourself a question why do movies like All the President's Men… make us feel so good when we leave?”Slavoj Žižek · ideological function of 'critical' films
“I prefer to be treated like a deadly jester than to play the image of de Botton and others, this kind of public wisdom.”Slavoj Žižek · Žižek's self-positioning as dangerous clown over public sage
“Screw sincerity. The question to be asked is whom will these arms serve and what will be their political function.”Slavoj Žižek · rejection of leftist moralism on Libya / geopolitical realism
“Sorry but we have run out of cream but we still have milk. Can I then bring you coffee without milk? This is what Hegelian dialectics is called.”Slavoj Žižek · coffee without cream / determinate negation
“The Montenegro guy is a dialectical negative. He knows that the absence itself has to be represented, marked by an empty glass.”Slavoj Žižek · positive inscription of absence / Hegelian dialectics
“You are by definition always injured by truth. So again I think that my ethics is totally opposite: it's not get rid of external obstacles just go deeply into yourself.”Slavoj Žižek · truth as painful encounter vs. self-actualization ideology
“If I go deeply in myself I find shit how should I put it it's nothing nothing interesting.”Slavoj Žižek · rejection of inner authenticity
“Thinking is like a mental rape if you want, it's something that forces itself upon you. So you need to start with an obscenity.”Slavoj Žižek · philosophy requires an initial violent/obscene rupture
“His stuttering is a hysterical in a progressive good sense resistance to like sorry it's too stupid for me I cannot take that seriously.”Slavoj Žižek · King's Speech stutter as progressive hysterical resistance
“At the end you have a total deadlock. No uplifting message. He is obliterated, totally broken, she the liberal face admits her inconsistency.”Slavoj Žižek · 24 as honest Hollywood refusing easy moral resolution
“In their Basque language… to fall in love is to be injured by love. And I think it's the same about truth.”Slavoj Žižek · truth as injury / love and knowledge
Transcript 69 turns
unknown
And I think that's all. Oh, just to let you know the format of this evening. There's going to be a short YouTube clip that Paul has selected, and then there'll be a little pause. Because of the back and forth between here and the cinema, there's slight pauses in between, so please bear with us. And then Paul will speak for about minutes, followed by a 45-minute discussion with Slavoj, followed by questions from you guys. That's it. Please give them both a very warm welcome.
And I think that's all. Oh, just to let you know the format of this evening. There's going to be a short YouTube clip that Paul has selected, and then there'll be a little pause. Because of the back and forth between here and the cinema, there's slight pauses in between, so please bear with us. And then Paul will speak for about minutes, followed by a 45-minute discussion with Slavoj, followed by questions from you guys. That's it. Please give them both a very warm welcome.
unknown
Jacques Lacan was a French psychoanalyst. He makes Freud sound like a simple valley girl. Lacan's theory of how the self works is so complicated it makes my teeth hurt to think about it. Slavoj Žižek is a philosopher at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. I think I said this fairly close to the way it's pronounced, who has written a book called The Puppet and the Dwarf. The book takes a modern, takes a look at modern Christianity from the viewpoint of Lacanian psychoanalysis, or at least that's what I think it's about. Welcome, Mr. Žižek. Did I say, tell me
Jacques Lacan was a French psychoanalyst. He makes Freud sound like a simple valley girl. Lacan's theory of how the self works is so complicated it makes my teeth hurt to think about it. Slavoj Žižek is a philosopher at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. I think I said this fairly close to the way it's pronounced, who has written a book called The Puppet and the Dwarf. The book takes a modern, takes a look at modern Christianity from the viewpoint of Lacanian psychoanalysis, or at least that's what I think it's about. Welcome, Mr. Žižek. Did I say, tell me
Slavoj Žižek
the right way? Slavoj Žižek. But again, I prefer it the wrong way. It makes me paranoiac if I hear it the right way.
the right way? Slavoj Žižek. But again, I prefer it the wrong way. It makes me paranoiac if I hear it the right way.
unknown
This is the most complicated book I have ever tried to read.
This is the most complicated book I have ever tried to read.
Slavoj Žižek
Strange, because the goal of the book is, on the contrary, to like make Lacan back into someone whom even your grandma could understand. So the thrust of the book is not so much Christianity. The basic idea is the following one. Today there is a certain common agreement that certain things are going on, like we need more tolerance, people no longer believe the era of big ideological.
Strange, because the goal of the book is, on the contrary, to like make Lacan back into someone whom even your grandma could understand. So the thrust of the book is not so much Christianity. The basic idea is the following one. Today there is a certain common agreement that certain things are going on, like we need more tolerance, people no longer believe the era of big ideological.
unknown
We need common tolerance
We need common tolerance
Slavoj Žižek
and. And on the other hand, ideology is over. Who cares about big ideological projects? The third complaint: too much consumption, society of consumption. Too
and. And on the other hand, ideology is over. Who cares about big ideological projects? The third complaint: too much consumption, society of consumption. Too
unknown
much materialism. Yeah, materialism and so
much materialism. Yeah, materialism and so
Slavoj Žižek
on. And lack of true authority. So these are all things that I try to undermine, not in the sense of defending authority, but in the sense of proving how it's the exact opposite which is going on. Could I give you just an example, for example, authority? Okay. Okay, let's say you have an good old-fashioned father. It's Sunday afternoon, you have to visit grandma. The father, good old-fashioned authoritarian father, will tell you, listen, I don't care how you feel, if you're a small kid, of course. I don't care how you feel, you have to go. You're going. Going, grandmother, and behave there properly. Okay, that's good. You can resist. No, nothing is broken. But let's say you have this so-called tolerant postmodern father. What he will tell you is the following: you know how much your grandmother loves you, but nonetheless, you should only visit her if you really want to. Now every child who is not an idiot, and they are not idiots, know that this apparent free choice secretly contains an even more stronger, much stronger order. It's not only you have to visit your grandmother, but you have to like it. I'm beginning to like this book all the more. That's one example of how apparent tolerance, choice and so on can conceal a much stronger, a much stronger order. Another.
on. And lack of true authority. So these are all things that I try to undermine, not in the sense of defending authority, but in the sense of proving how it's the exact opposite which is going on. Could I give you just an example, for example, authority? Okay. Okay, let's say you have an good old-fashioned father. It's Sunday afternoon, you have to visit grandma. The father, good old-fashioned authoritarian father, will tell you, listen, I don't care how you feel, if you're a small kid, of course. I don't care how you feel, you have to go. You're going. Going, grandmother, and behave there properly. Okay, that's good. You can resist. No, nothing is broken. But let's say you have this so-called tolerant postmodern father. What he will tell you is the following: you know how much your grandmother loves you, but nonetheless, you should only visit her if you really want to. Now every child who is not an idiot, and they are not idiots, know that this apparent free choice secretly contains an even more stronger, much stronger order. It's not only you have to visit your grandmother, but you have to like it. I'm beginning to like this book all the more. That's one example of how apparent tolerance, choice and so on can conceal a much stronger, a much stronger order. Another.
unknown
So we should go back to more like the dad that just says because I said so?
So we should go back to more like the dad that just says because I said so?
Slavoj Žižek
Absolutely. It's more honest. Another example: society of consumption. We say, oh, we just consume today and so on and so on, and no values, no constraints and so on. Ah, one nice paradox. It appears like, you know, today you are allowed to dedicate your life to pleasures, actualizing your true self, who cares about. Build your sense of self-esteem. Yeah, yeah. But in order to do this, now things get complicated. You have to, you have to do the proper jogging, proper feeding,
Absolutely. It's more honest. Another example: society of consumption. We say, oh, we just consume today and so on and so on, and no values, no constraints and so on. Ah, one nice paradox. It appears like, you know, today you are allowed to dedicate your life to pleasures, actualizing your true self, who cares about. Build your sense of self-esteem. Yeah, yeah. But in order to do this, now things get complicated. You have to, you have to do the proper jogging, proper feeding,
unknown
not to harass others and so on and so on. So the paradox is that the final
not to harass others and so on and so on. So the paradox is that the final
Slavoj Žižek
outcome of this so-called hedonism is that our lives, I claim, are more regulated than ever. The final paradox here. Trying to live healthy is killing me. Absolutely. Yeah. And you know what's the solution then? The solution is the following one. You can have it all, but in a reduced form deprived of its substance. For example, coffee? Yes, without caffeine. Sweets, pastry? Yes, without sugar. Beer. You're a kind of Denis Leary from Slovenia. Yeah, yeah. But let's go on. It's not only these ridiculous examples. What about safe sex, which means basically sex without sex? What about even, if I may add to this series, the so-called Colin Powell doctrine, which means war without warfare? At least for our side, no casualties on our side and so on. I'm beginning to get into this Lacanian stuff. The ultimate, if you ask me, maybe you will not like now my next example. Okay. If there is one product which I think encapsulates this logic, is, it's a kind of a slightly vulgar one in California, I bought it recently, a chocolate laxative. You know, chocolate usually supposed to give you constipation. The idea is, you know, the product. Is that in here? Absolutely. All of this is in there. Okay. So, and then there are again numerous other examples. Like people say we are today too passive, just passive consumers and so on. But canned laughter. We're running out of time. I have to, I want
outcome of this so-called hedonism is that our lives, I claim, are more regulated than ever. The final paradox here. Trying to live healthy is killing me. Absolutely. Yeah. And you know what's the solution then? The solution is the following one. You can have it all, but in a reduced form deprived of its substance. For example, coffee? Yes, without caffeine. Sweets, pastry? Yes, without sugar. Beer. You're a kind of Denis Leary from Slovenia. Yeah, yeah. But let's go on. It's not only these ridiculous examples. What about safe sex, which means basically sex without sex? What about even, if I may add to this series, the so-called Colin Powell doctrine, which means war without warfare? At least for our side, no casualties on our side and so on. I'm beginning to get into this Lacanian stuff. The ultimate, if you ask me, maybe you will not like now my next example. Okay. If there is one product which I think encapsulates this logic, is, it's a kind of a slightly vulgar one in California, I bought it recently, a chocolate laxative. You know, chocolate usually supposed to give you constipation. The idea is, you know, the product. Is that in here? Absolutely. All of this is in there. Okay. So, and then there are again numerous other examples. Like people say we are today too passive, just passive consumers and so on. But canned laughter. We're running out of time. I have to, I want
unknown
to thank you for being here and I want to thank you for being on Nightbeat, the show that is not afraid to bring you a Lacanian psychoanalytic take on Christianity. It's all here in the book The Puppet and the Dwarf.
to thank you for being here and I want to thank you for being on Nightbeat, the show that is not afraid to bring you a Lacanian psychoanalytic take on Christianity. It's all here in the book The Puppet and the Dwarf.
Slavoj Žižek
And as a Marxist, if I may add, if somebody tells that Lacan is difficult, this is class propaganda by the enemy. Okay. Thank you so
And as a Marxist, if I may add, if somebody tells that Lacan is difficult, this is class propaganda by the enemy. Okay. Thank you so
unknown
much for coming in. I never thought I'd have this much fun talking about this. Thank you very much. Have a great weekend. Take care.
much for coming in. I never thought I'd have this much fun talking about this. Thank you very much. Have a great weekend. Take care.
unknown
Well hi everyone. I inflicted that on you for a purpose because what I actually would argue is that that isn't the problem. That guy's obviously an idiot. I'm referring to Nolan and not you Slavoj. That isn't the problem. My what I'll try and pursue with Slavoj this evening is I actually think the media's biggest problem is when it takes itself incredibly seriously. So Mr. Nolan there isn't the problem. It's much more mainstream so-called highly intelligent people presenting themselves in the media. Now there are two key quotations that resonated with me and I begin my book Žižek and the Media with these quotations. The first one is from Hannah Arendt in her essay Crisis in Culture, and she says there are a great many authors of the past who've survived centuries of oblivion and neglect, but it's an open question as to whether they can survive an entertaining version of what they have to say. Now I would argue if anyone's pursued that open question of Arendt then it's Slavoj here who isn't afraid to engage with the Mr. Nolans of this world. Now the way, apologies to anyone who's already come across this joke but I think a very underrated philosopher is the guy from Birmingham, Jasper Carrott. And he once, you have to be of a certain generation from a certain part of the world to realize the significance of that point. But Jasper Carrott once told the story of a very middle-class dinner party and given the geography here I'm guessing an uber upper middle-class dinner party would be somewhere like Islington, correct me if I'm wrong. So incredibly middle-class dinner party, it's towards the end of the evening everyone's had a wonderful time and the attendees are slowly gyrating, I hope I'm not getting you too excited here, slowly gyrating their Riedel crystal glasses with a Chateau Lafite I bet there's a few of you thinking actually was a better year. But they're smelling the beautiful aroma they're having a wonderful time, post-prandial conversations going full pelt. And the old arthritic flatulent family dog staggers into the living room, breaks wind noisily, falls down and starts noisily licking its scrotum. No need to leave sir. Someone from the
Well hi everyone. I inflicted that on you for a purpose because what I actually would argue is that that isn't the problem. That guy's obviously an idiot. I'm referring to Nolan and not you Slavoj. That isn't the problem. My what I'll try and pursue with Slavoj this evening is I actually think the media's biggest problem is when it takes itself incredibly seriously. So Mr. Nolan there isn't the problem. It's much more mainstream so-called highly intelligent people presenting themselves in the media. Now there are two key quotations that resonated with me and I begin my book Žižek and the Media with these quotations. The first one is from Hannah Arendt in her essay Crisis in Culture, and she says there are a great many authors of the past who've survived centuries of oblivion and neglect, but it's an open question as to whether they can survive an entertaining version of what they have to say. Now I would argue if anyone's pursued that open question of Arendt then it's Slavoj here who isn't afraid to engage with the Mr. Nolans of this world. Now the way, apologies to anyone who's already come across this joke but I think a very underrated philosopher is the guy from Birmingham, Jasper Carrott. And he once, you have to be of a certain generation from a certain part of the world to realize the significance of that point. But Jasper Carrott once told the story of a very middle-class dinner party and given the geography here I'm guessing an uber upper middle-class dinner party would be somewhere like Islington, correct me if I'm wrong. So incredibly middle-class dinner party, it's towards the end of the evening everyone's had a wonderful time and the attendees are slowly gyrating, I hope I'm not getting you too excited here, slowly gyrating their Riedel crystal glasses with a Chateau Lafite I bet there's a few of you thinking actually was a better year. But they're smelling the beautiful aroma they're having a wonderful time, post-prandial conversations going full pelt. And the old arthritic flatulent family dog staggers into the living room, breaks wind noisily, falls down and starts noisily licking its scrotum. No need to leave sir. Someone from the
unknown
RSPCA. So it's licking itself and there's an unbearable embarrassment descends upon the dinner party. So one of the male guests says to try and get rid of this embarrassment, I wish I could do that, as he looks upon this dog enthusiastically licking himself. And quick as a flash the hostess says, give him a biscuit and you can. Now I would suggest, keep up with me, I would suggest that story actually illustrates what I actually think Slavoj does and without wanting to insult him there's a long. Which role is mine, the dog or I'm giving them biscuits or? I'm going to tell you now. In the old Greek philosophical tradition Diogenes, Cyon, ancient anyone from a classics background Cyon ancient Greek for the dog and Diogenes was known as the dog. So there's a long philosophical tradition of people doing offensive things in the public arena. Diogenes famously defecated, masturbated in, I was going to say masticated that's slightly different, masturbated in public and as far as I know Slavoj hasn't done either of those yet. But this idea of offending, there being a point behind it and what I would say is the point behind it to me is that there is this the media's reaction is to try and co-opt that sense of humor. And to me Slavoj is partly the dog causing the disturbance but also he has elements of the hostess who actually says give him a biscuit and you can and what that comment actually does is stop the media trying to control and calm a potentially embarrassing situation. It ups the ante again, makes people conscious and awkward and that would be my defense and we'll I hope hopefully get onto it with Slavoj later about the role which humor plays and I've often defended Slavoj time after time after time because he has the audacity to be funny and po-faced academics can't handle that. And I would argue it's not just humor. Todd McGowan in an issue of the International Journal of Žižek Studies came out with a great line saying sometimes we need to remember the path to seriousness is strewn with jokes. And I seriously believe that so we'll I'll discuss that with Slavoj. The second quotation that I'd like to ask you to think about is from Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man where he says the unrealistic sound of these propositions is indicative not of their utopian character but the strength of the forces preventing their realization. And this will be my particular, we'll talk about the media in general, but I think before you talk about the media, this is cheaper than therapy for me, I just wanted to have a quick moan about before you even get to say anything in the media, it's the various screening process because that was the idea behind tonight, the way in which thought is screened both literally and metaphorically. And in psychoanalysis there's the notion of the subject of the enunciation, the subject of the enunciated and also the position from which the subject enunciates. So I'm not claiming any general truth to my subsequent arguments here, just a few of my pet peeves about the way in which media in the UK specifically and some of the things Slavoj may not have picked up on. So before you can even try, before we ask ourselves why isn't philosophical thought done, why isn't serious thought done more often, I think we have to ask some pretty obvious questions and I used to play a bit of football and just because there's an open goal doesn't mean you shouldn't try and smash the back of the net. And I don't think sometimes the most obvious things aren't pointed out. So at the risk of saying the obvious, recently there's been Andrew Marr, I was going to say the subject of marital infidelity has raised its ugly head, Andrew Marr is in the news but Andrew Marr's issue about super-injunctions. So this is a journalist supposedly pursuing the truth, the first person to use super-injunctions. But I would argue after the Arendt
RSPCA. So it's licking itself and there's an unbearable embarrassment descends upon the dinner party. So one of the male guests says to try and get rid of this embarrassment, I wish I could do that, as he looks upon this dog enthusiastically licking himself. And quick as a flash the hostess says, give him a biscuit and you can. Now I would suggest, keep up with me, I would suggest that story actually illustrates what I actually think Slavoj does and without wanting to insult him there's a long. Which role is mine, the dog or I'm giving them biscuits or? I'm going to tell you now. In the old Greek philosophical tradition Diogenes, Cyon, ancient anyone from a classics background Cyon ancient Greek for the dog and Diogenes was known as the dog. So there's a long philosophical tradition of people doing offensive things in the public arena. Diogenes famously defecated, masturbated in, I was going to say masticated that's slightly different, masturbated in public and as far as I know Slavoj hasn't done either of those yet. But this idea of offending, there being a point behind it and what I would say is the point behind it to me is that there is this the media's reaction is to try and co-opt that sense of humor. And to me Slavoj is partly the dog causing the disturbance but also he has elements of the hostess who actually says give him a biscuit and you can and what that comment actually does is stop the media trying to control and calm a potentially embarrassing situation. It ups the ante again, makes people conscious and awkward and that would be my defense and we'll I hope hopefully get onto it with Slavoj later about the role which humor plays and I've often defended Slavoj time after time after time because he has the audacity to be funny and po-faced academics can't handle that. And I would argue it's not just humor. Todd McGowan in an issue of the International Journal of Žižek Studies came out with a great line saying sometimes we need to remember the path to seriousness is strewn with jokes. And I seriously believe that so we'll I'll discuss that with Slavoj. The second quotation that I'd like to ask you to think about is from Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man where he says the unrealistic sound of these propositions is indicative not of their utopian character but the strength of the forces preventing their realization. And this will be my particular, we'll talk about the media in general, but I think before you talk about the media, this is cheaper than therapy for me, I just wanted to have a quick moan about before you even get to say anything in the media, it's the various screening process because that was the idea behind tonight, the way in which thought is screened both literally and metaphorically. And in psychoanalysis there's the notion of the subject of the enunciation, the subject of the enunciated and also the position from which the subject enunciates. So I'm not claiming any general truth to my subsequent arguments here, just a few of my pet peeves about the way in which media in the UK specifically and some of the things Slavoj may not have picked up on. So before you can even try, before we ask ourselves why isn't philosophical thought done, why isn't serious thought done more often, I think we have to ask some pretty obvious questions and I used to play a bit of football and just because there's an open goal doesn't mean you shouldn't try and smash the back of the net. And I don't think sometimes the most obvious things aren't pointed out. So at the risk of saying the obvious, recently there's been Andrew Marr, I was going to say the subject of marital infidelity has raised its ugly head, Andrew Marr is in the news but Andrew Marr's issue about super-injunctions. So this is a journalist supposedly pursuing the truth, the first person to use super-injunctions. But I would argue after the Arendt
unknown
quote that one of the we have a super-egoic injunction: everything has to be entertaining, everything has to be light. And that I think is one of the main obvious screenings that the media enacts. So just recently you're I'm sure you're fully aware there's been a high-profile death in the last few days. Probably not thinking of the one I'm thinking of because the one I'm thinking of was in it was mentioned in an editorial in The Guardian, it was mentioned on Radio news, it was Whispering Ted Lowe. This for those who aren't sports fans was a snooker commentator who got full mention in national British press for having whispered commentaries on snooker. In the last few days Ernesto Sábato, great author, Argentinian author who wrote a book El Túnel in he recently died. And I'm fascinated by the fact no one bats an eyelid when Whispering Ted Lowe gets a mention on Radio many of you probably loads of people haven't heard of El Túnel. It's only ironically this last month it's been published a translation in English. So for since this has never been available. Great existentialist author, but we get media coverage of a snooker commentator. So that's the extent of the problem. There's also just basic things that need pointing out, my experience of dealing with the media in Britain. It's probably, I don't think I'm exaggerating to say, slightly more incestuous than an East Anglian village in the Middle Ages. That creates problems anyone who wants to do anything vaguely serious has to get through that Oxbridge mafia. It's not even an intellectual omertà as the mafia have this vow of silence. More like a vow of inanity that you're not allowed to say certain things that might push the boat. So the gatekeepers, I've noticed for example, think of the number of times the issue of class has been discussed in the media. And my one of my personal ironies in that is I've never heard the issue of class being discussed with anyone pronouncing it with a flat vowel. Oh, the irony. In recent politics, there's Luciana Berger, please correct me if I've got this wrong but from memory it's Luciana Berger in Wavertee in Liverpool and Tristram Hunt in Stoke-on-Trent. These were new Labour candidates, parachuted in on silk monogrammed wafting into these constituencies. Now having drank quite a lot in Wavertee, I can confirm to you you might have been suspicious but I've never ever heard anyone say at the bar in Liverpool, Luciana could you get a couple of pints of Guinness in please. So this idea that before we even begin to try and have serious thought or have serious political discussion in the media, even working-class constituencies in the north of England aren't represented by their own. So the fact that it's difficult to get philosophical thought done in the media, it's a bit of a no-brainer. So briefly various types of screening and then we'll get onto Slavoj's own views but there's an absolute exclusion. So I'm fascinated, you've heard of the military-industrial complex so I like to think of the media-industrial non-complex. I'm not a massive fan of Derrida but when was the last time you heard Derrida discussed? When was the last time Deleuze, Hegel, Kant, any of these people? There seems to be this it goes without saying that these people will never be discussed in a serious format. The other day there was Great Lives on Radio discussed Simone de Beauvoir and surprisingly enough the conversation went along the lines of she had a very complicated love life with Sartre. They mentioned the ménage trois predictably enough and then Matthew Parris very quickly shut down any serious discussion when they mentioned existentialism by saying, oh but of course existentialism is passé now, existentialism is out of date. And that was the end of it. A thinker as serious as Sartre is no longer fashionable, let's not talk about him. So there's a member of the audience who's the editor of the blog Ready Steady Book and he
quote that one of the we have a super-egoic injunction: everything has to be entertaining, everything has to be light. And that I think is one of the main obvious screenings that the media enacts. So just recently you're I'm sure you're fully aware there's been a high-profile death in the last few days. Probably not thinking of the one I'm thinking of because the one I'm thinking of was in it was mentioned in an editorial in The Guardian, it was mentioned on Radio news, it was Whispering Ted Lowe. This for those who aren't sports fans was a snooker commentator who got full mention in national British press for having whispered commentaries on snooker. In the last few days Ernesto Sábato, great author, Argentinian author who wrote a book El Túnel in he recently died. And I'm fascinated by the fact no one bats an eyelid when Whispering Ted Lowe gets a mention on Radio many of you probably loads of people haven't heard of El Túnel. It's only ironically this last month it's been published a translation in English. So for since this has never been available. Great existentialist author, but we get media coverage of a snooker commentator. So that's the extent of the problem. There's also just basic things that need pointing out, my experience of dealing with the media in Britain. It's probably, I don't think I'm exaggerating to say, slightly more incestuous than an East Anglian village in the Middle Ages. That creates problems anyone who wants to do anything vaguely serious has to get through that Oxbridge mafia. It's not even an intellectual omertà as the mafia have this vow of silence. More like a vow of inanity that you're not allowed to say certain things that might push the boat. So the gatekeepers, I've noticed for example, think of the number of times the issue of class has been discussed in the media. And my one of my personal ironies in that is I've never heard the issue of class being discussed with anyone pronouncing it with a flat vowel. Oh, the irony. In recent politics, there's Luciana Berger, please correct me if I've got this wrong but from memory it's Luciana Berger in Wavertee in Liverpool and Tristram Hunt in Stoke-on-Trent. These were new Labour candidates, parachuted in on silk monogrammed wafting into these constituencies. Now having drank quite a lot in Wavertee, I can confirm to you you might have been suspicious but I've never ever heard anyone say at the bar in Liverpool, Luciana could you get a couple of pints of Guinness in please. So this idea that before we even begin to try and have serious thought or have serious political discussion in the media, even working-class constituencies in the north of England aren't represented by their own. So the fact that it's difficult to get philosophical thought done in the media, it's a bit of a no-brainer. So briefly various types of screening and then we'll get onto Slavoj's own views but there's an absolute exclusion. So I'm fascinated, you've heard of the military-industrial complex so I like to think of the media-industrial non-complex. I'm not a massive fan of Derrida but when was the last time you heard Derrida discussed? When was the last time Deleuze, Hegel, Kant, any of these people? There seems to be this it goes without saying that these people will never be discussed in a serious format. The other day there was Great Lives on Radio discussed Simone de Beauvoir and surprisingly enough the conversation went along the lines of she had a very complicated love life with Sartre. They mentioned the ménage trois predictably enough and then Matthew Parris very quickly shut down any serious discussion when they mentioned existentialism by saying, oh but of course existentialism is passé now, existentialism is out of date. And that was the end of it. A thinker as serious as Sartre is no longer fashionable, let's not talk about him. So there's a member of the audience who's the editor of the blog Ready Steady Book and he
unknown
interviewed Alain de Botton, who's a particular bête noire of mine. And he, Alain, Mark when interviewing him asked him, he said you mention a lot of classical philosophers etc but you never mention any continental philosophers. And Alain de Botton these are his words from the interview: the figures you mention, Baudrillard and Deleuze, aren't people I like to write about but I have read some of their works with pleasure. My real influence among the modern French thinkers is Roland Barthes. Now what I would say to that is nothing wrong with Roland Barthes at all but that's the level of your intellectual ambition and the idea that he has to say he's read Deleuze and Baudrillard, he has to say that rather than look stupid. But if you've genuinely enjoyed reading someone why wouldn't you write about them. And that's what I'm fascinated about, it goes without saying that certain thinkers you do not discuss them. Then there's relative exclusion, so that I would call absolute exclusion, certain people just aren't included. Then there's relative exclusion, what I would call the partiality of choices. I've mentioned Ernesto Sábato, El Túnel I would argue is at least as good as L'Étranger but why hasn't it been translated only this year? Arguably it was in Spanish, it wasn't French or German which the European intellectuals tend to favor. It wasn't part of the magical realism trend but why are certain things excluded that so obviously merit discussion but they are somehow excluded. I for a long time, and this is from the personal point of view, I wanted to do a radio program and my dad once kindly said, son if I say anything about you you've got a face for radio. And I wanted to do a program called Desperate Dons on the basis that what's going on in the university system. And for various reasons that was never accepted by the BBC, which I took on the chin, absolutely no problem, it's highly competitive field. But then you find people, I came across Quentin Skinner giving a talk about the intricacies of the Privy Council. And I'm thinking to what percentage of the population and what conceptual depth does this have but Quentin whittered on about the intricacies of at what length of the leg to wear a particular garter. And again this goes without saying this is what British media at its most serious tends to discuss. One of the most I think insensitive or lack of hypocritical approaches was Tristram Hunt again. He wrote he's written several books one of which is the is it Engels: The Frock-Coated Communist. He also picked in a Guardian editorial on is it Robert Noonan I think it was his real name, Robert Tressell was his pseudonym, The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, the author of that. And Tristram Hunt criticized Robert Tressell for being a part of a middle-class socialist elite. And I'm thinking have I missed something? Here's someone called Tristram writing about the alleged middle-class proclivities of an itinerant Irish painter and decorator. So I do up partly admire that level of chutzpah. Penultimate point: there's a certain death by blandness or misinterpretation. So in The Independent for example Slavoj has been denigrated as a postmodernist by Johann Hari. And I'm thinking of all thing there's plenty to disagree with Slavoj about. To call him a postmodernist is at the most basic level lazy and ill-informed. So please have a go at Slavoj in the press but why call him a postmodernist? It's just a knee-jerk dismissal of thought before it's even been thought. Finally, structural screening. There's a certain unaccountability. There's an institutionalized in psychoanalysis and it's a phrase Slavoj's used quite a few times: Je sais bien, mais quand même. I know very well but even so. I would ask the rhetorical question from your own experience when you watch the media: what does it take for such a poor level of conceptual performance that people in the media are held to account. So I can think for example of if you think back to the US election night when President Obama was elected, if anyone saw Dimbleby's performance that
interviewed Alain de Botton, who's a particular bête noire of mine. And he, Alain, Mark when interviewing him asked him, he said you mention a lot of classical philosophers etc but you never mention any continental philosophers. And Alain de Botton these are his words from the interview: the figures you mention, Baudrillard and Deleuze, aren't people I like to write about but I have read some of their works with pleasure. My real influence among the modern French thinkers is Roland Barthes. Now what I would say to that is nothing wrong with Roland Barthes at all but that's the level of your intellectual ambition and the idea that he has to say he's read Deleuze and Baudrillard, he has to say that rather than look stupid. But if you've genuinely enjoyed reading someone why wouldn't you write about them. And that's what I'm fascinated about, it goes without saying that certain thinkers you do not discuss them. Then there's relative exclusion, so that I would call absolute exclusion, certain people just aren't included. Then there's relative exclusion, what I would call the partiality of choices. I've mentioned Ernesto Sábato, El Túnel I would argue is at least as good as L'Étranger but why hasn't it been translated only this year? Arguably it was in Spanish, it wasn't French or German which the European intellectuals tend to favor. It wasn't part of the magical realism trend but why are certain things excluded that so obviously merit discussion but they are somehow excluded. I for a long time, and this is from the personal point of view, I wanted to do a radio program and my dad once kindly said, son if I say anything about you you've got a face for radio. And I wanted to do a program called Desperate Dons on the basis that what's going on in the university system. And for various reasons that was never accepted by the BBC, which I took on the chin, absolutely no problem, it's highly competitive field. But then you find people, I came across Quentin Skinner giving a talk about the intricacies of the Privy Council. And I'm thinking to what percentage of the population and what conceptual depth does this have but Quentin whittered on about the intricacies of at what length of the leg to wear a particular garter. And again this goes without saying this is what British media at its most serious tends to discuss. One of the most I think insensitive or lack of hypocritical approaches was Tristram Hunt again. He wrote he's written several books one of which is the is it Engels: The Frock-Coated Communist. He also picked in a Guardian editorial on is it Robert Noonan I think it was his real name, Robert Tressell was his pseudonym, The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, the author of that. And Tristram Hunt criticized Robert Tressell for being a part of a middle-class socialist elite. And I'm thinking have I missed something? Here's someone called Tristram writing about the alleged middle-class proclivities of an itinerant Irish painter and decorator. So I do up partly admire that level of chutzpah. Penultimate point: there's a certain death by blandness or misinterpretation. So in The Independent for example Slavoj has been denigrated as a postmodernist by Johann Hari. And I'm thinking of all thing there's plenty to disagree with Slavoj about. To call him a postmodernist is at the most basic level lazy and ill-informed. So please have a go at Slavoj in the press but why call him a postmodernist? It's just a knee-jerk dismissal of thought before it's even been thought. Finally, structural screening. There's a certain unaccountability. There's an institutionalized in psychoanalysis and it's a phrase Slavoj's used quite a few times: Je sais bien, mais quand même. I know very well but even so. I would ask the rhetorical question from your own experience when you watch the media: what does it take for such a poor level of conceptual performance that people in the media are held to account. So I can think for example of if you think back to the US election night when President Obama was elected, if anyone saw Dimbleby's performance that
unknown
night. I was watching it with a friend and we actually turned over to watch Sky coverage because Dimbleby was so bad but yet he's part of the Dimbleby dynasty, nothing happens. In academics shouldn't we're not holy in that, academics I think have a large body of responsibility. We have been awful at actually promoting serious thought in the media. So I don't know whether I'm guessing a fair few in the audience are from an academic background, but for those who aren't we have what's called the Research Assessment Exercise that's being replaced by the Research Excellence Framework. So conceptual thought in the UK from an academic point of view in the Research Excellence Framework is reduced to a catchphrase of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. I've got a genetic ASBO forbidding me having children but any of you who've got children I'm guessing that they bring home starred work and you have fridge magnets with their latest school report. Academics in the UK get one to four stars for their work. So before perhaps we ask why isn't the media doing more serious thought, we've reduced the pursuit of knowledge in UK universities to stars and fridge magnets. Finally at a political level again I've mentioned this to Slavoj in the past, but we used to have what was called it was the Department of Education, guess what universities are in the Department of Education. Now then it was the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills. So universities Slavoj before mentioned a filthy form of sandwich but universities are sandwiched between innovation and skills just in case the word university gets isolated and thought for its own sake is conceived of for a second. And now DIUS got replaced by you couldn't make this up DBIS, the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. Universities aren't even mentioned. So I would suggest all of these, they may sound tangential, they may sound personal but I'm trying to give you specific examples of all the time of how serious thought gets precluded, excluded. And I'm just genuinely shocked that Slavoj ever manages to get the profile he does given these barriers. The issue for example the London School of Economics recently, there's also the St Andrews the links with Libya and Syria. We have a grant body in the UK academia called the Arts and Humanities Research Council and they're giving out grants and there was a furore because they specified certain amount of the grant money was going to go to notions that dealt with the Big Society. And a load of academics spoke out saying this is terrible, how can they dictate what type of research we do because they're telling us we have to do work on the Big Society. I just think there's a huge level of disingenuousness about that. To think that British academics don't do lots of work because they're hungry for a government grant in the first place is the big thing. Issues of whether we'd study the Big Society or not are largely if you ask me irrelevant. So just to finish with and I just want to make finish with one last point that it's not this old Adorno-type criticism that it's high culture versus low culture and why does the media full of low culture. To repeat: I think that Nolan excerpt I showed you is actually more honest. I defer to no person in this room for my love of crap low culture. So I love what is it Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, Spartacus: Blood and Sand. Now that is top television. It's when the media tries to be deadly serious. That's my problem. That's when I think it's at its ideologically most dangerous. And having mentioned Adorno, I think there's a massively underrated essay he once wrote called Resignation and he made the point because he was asked and I think Slavoj's been asked this before what's the point of having serious thought when there are real issues to be addressed. And Adorno said, when the doors are barricaded, it's doubly important that thought not be interrupted. So I've interrupted
night. I was watching it with a friend and we actually turned over to watch Sky coverage because Dimbleby was so bad but yet he's part of the Dimbleby dynasty, nothing happens. In academics shouldn't we're not holy in that, academics I think have a large body of responsibility. We have been awful at actually promoting serious thought in the media. So I don't know whether I'm guessing a fair few in the audience are from an academic background, but for those who aren't we have what's called the Research Assessment Exercise that's being replaced by the Research Excellence Framework. So conceptual thought in the UK from an academic point of view in the Research Excellence Framework is reduced to a catchphrase of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. I've got a genetic ASBO forbidding me having children but any of you who've got children I'm guessing that they bring home starred work and you have fridge magnets with their latest school report. Academics in the UK get one to four stars for their work. So before perhaps we ask why isn't the media doing more serious thought, we've reduced the pursuit of knowledge in UK universities to stars and fridge magnets. Finally at a political level again I've mentioned this to Slavoj in the past, but we used to have what was called it was the Department of Education, guess what universities are in the Department of Education. Now then it was the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills. So universities Slavoj before mentioned a filthy form of sandwich but universities are sandwiched between innovation and skills just in case the word university gets isolated and thought for its own sake is conceived of for a second. And now DIUS got replaced by you couldn't make this up DBIS, the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. Universities aren't even mentioned. So I would suggest all of these, they may sound tangential, they may sound personal but I'm trying to give you specific examples of all the time of how serious thought gets precluded, excluded. And I'm just genuinely shocked that Slavoj ever manages to get the profile he does given these barriers. The issue for example the London School of Economics recently, there's also the St Andrews the links with Libya and Syria. We have a grant body in the UK academia called the Arts and Humanities Research Council and they're giving out grants and there was a furore because they specified certain amount of the grant money was going to go to notions that dealt with the Big Society. And a load of academics spoke out saying this is terrible, how can they dictate what type of research we do because they're telling us we have to do work on the Big Society. I just think there's a huge level of disingenuousness about that. To think that British academics don't do lots of work because they're hungry for a government grant in the first place is the big thing. Issues of whether we'd study the Big Society or not are largely if you ask me irrelevant. So just to finish with and I just want to make finish with one last point that it's not this old Adorno-type criticism that it's high culture versus low culture and why does the media full of low culture. To repeat: I think that Nolan excerpt I showed you is actually more honest. I defer to no person in this room for my love of crap low culture. So I love what is it Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, Spartacus: Blood and Sand. Now that is top television. It's when the media tries to be deadly serious. That's my problem. That's when I think it's at its ideologically most dangerous. And having mentioned Adorno, I think there's a massively underrated essay he once wrote called Resignation and he made the point because he was asked and I think Slavoj's been asked this before what's the point of having serious thought when there are real issues to be addressed. And Adorno said, when the doors are barricaded, it's doubly important that thought not be interrupted. So I've interrupted
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long enough, I won't interrupt him hopefully like Nolan did. So I will start asking Slavoj a few questions. Slavoj, you know that Nightbeat interview we've just seen with Nolan as ironically given the discussion you're having with him, Nolan comes across as the postmodern father patronizing his audience. As I've mentioned I think it's self-evident that that Nightbeat interview's transparently shallow and I would argue based upon your work that that's when the media's at its most dangerous when it's pretending to be serious. And when it's silly like that it's not really a problem. What would you make of that? I agree with you but I think nonetheless that we have here maybe two two supplementary versions. Yes, I agree with you, when it takes itself serious is more dangerous. But on the other hand isn't it also that when the media tries to be funny it's also dangerous, you know why? Because they pretend that they are funny and they count on the fact that nonetheless in spite of being aware that it's all a joke we will take it seriously. So, you know, both versions are dangerous. I am tempted to say that when the media pretend to be serious sometimes it's even easy to say oh but who can take this seriously and so on. What I find so typically in politics in the last years, you know, where from from Menem in Argentina to Reagan. I think Reagan's presidency as I often repeated was really a kind of a revolution for me. No, no admirer of Reagan, quite the opposite. It was the first let's call it post- as some friends of mine, I think Eric Santner called Ronald Reagan, the first post-Oedipal president. In what sense? I like this theory of American presidency where Nixon, Richard Nixon the much maligned Nixon. I think it's time maybe to rehabilitate Carter and Nixon. First, you know, let me make a very economic reductionist vulgar point. If you measure leftism by how much money, what percentage of gross national product you give to education, to health care, to social causes, then I hope you are aware that Nixon was by far more than Kennedy and so on the most leftist American president who on the top of it make this historic breakthrough with China and so on. So don't tell me now we are going to media and ideology. This is why I hated from the very beginning the movie All the President's Men. It's ideology at its purest. Why? On the one hand you can say it's a big proof of democratic openness of our society. Look, even the top of our society, big rich capitalists or the president can be shown to be corrupt and so on and so on.
long enough, I won't interrupt him hopefully like Nolan did. So I will start asking Slavoj a few questions. Slavoj, you know that Nightbeat interview we've just seen with Nolan as ironically given the discussion you're having with him, Nolan comes across as the postmodern father patronizing his audience. As I've mentioned I think it's self-evident that that Nightbeat interview's transparently shallow and I would argue based upon your work that that's when the media's at its most dangerous when it's pretending to be serious. And when it's silly like that it's not really a problem. What would you make of that? I agree with you but I think nonetheless that we have here maybe two two supplementary versions. Yes, I agree with you, when it takes itself serious is more dangerous. But on the other hand isn't it also that when the media tries to be funny it's also dangerous, you know why? Because they pretend that they are funny and they count on the fact that nonetheless in spite of being aware that it's all a joke we will take it seriously. So, you know, both versions are dangerous. I am tempted to say that when the media pretend to be serious sometimes it's even easy to say oh but who can take this seriously and so on. What I find so typically in politics in the last years, you know, where from from Menem in Argentina to Reagan. I think Reagan's presidency as I often repeated was really a kind of a revolution for me. No, no admirer of Reagan, quite the opposite. It was the first let's call it post- as some friends of mine, I think Eric Santner called Ronald Reagan, the first post-Oedipal president. In what sense? I like this theory of American presidency where Nixon, Richard Nixon the much maligned Nixon. I think it's time maybe to rehabilitate Carter and Nixon. First, you know, let me make a very economic reductionist vulgar point. If you measure leftism by how much money, what percentage of gross national product you give to education, to health care, to social causes, then I hope you are aware that Nixon was by far more than Kennedy and so on the most leftist American president who on the top of it make this historic breakthrough with China and so on. So don't tell me now we are going to media and ideology. This is why I hated from the very beginning the movie All the President's Men. It's ideology at its purest. Why? On the one hand you can say it's a big proof of democratic openness of our society. Look, even the top of our society, big rich capitalists or the president can be shown to be corrupt and so on and so on.
Slavoj Žižek
That moralistic critique is part of our media. So I agree here with you absolutely that here I agree that this serious approach can be even more dangerous. For example, people often mock me, attack me where and say my god, you complain about capitalism but aren't all the media full of anti-capitalism today? You cannot open a newspaper and not find reports on that company is using slave slave labor in its outsourced units, that company is polluting environment, that bank is getting state state funded blah. Yeah, but it's always a personal corruption and as such open to so-called investigative journalism to be resolved through moral openness and so on and so on. But I think that precisely this type of anti-capitalist moralism is the most tricky. Because again let me return to All the President's Men. Where does ideol- ideology enter? Well ideology enters with just ask yourself a question why do movies like All the President's Men and I know it's based on Bernstein, Woodward and so on and movies like Pelican Brief. Why do they make us, why when we leave the hall we have such a good feeling and so on? Because with all the corruption which reaches the very top shown, the message isn't the message basic message my god, what a great society we live in where look, two ordinary guy journalists can overthrow the mightiest man in the world, the US president and so on and so on. No, the serious approach to Nixon begins with how was it possible, which and I'm not playing any leftist paranoia, just common sense. It is obvious that some of the strong elements in that whatever you call it military-industrial complex must have at a certain point they must have decided enough of Nixon for whatever reasons maybe China I don't know what to get rid of him. I would like to hear I would like to hear that story. So again here it's the only thing that I would have done I agree with you. Even with philosophy I would go as far as if to say no, the true danger is not media denouncing me as clown, jester. Although now it changed interestingly. It's not only clown jester it's the deadly jester, you know. Oh yeah, yeah. And this is I think an interesting shift that they are nonetheless some people starting to take us in a negative way seriously. Till five years ago I was, yeah, you should go and listen that guy he is funny all the dirty jokes don't take him seriously but it's amusing. Now more and more, even more than here in the UK in Germany, in France it's changing into don't be deceived by this clownish surface, behind it there is a deadly dangerous corruptive message, you know. It's just a okay. But what I'm saying is that I prefer to be treated like that than to play this image of like de Botton and others, this kind of a public wis- kind of wisdom and so on. But again I would not underestimate to return to Nixon the other side of functioning. Look, everybody laughs at Berlusconi in Italy. It's a jester and so on. Yeah, but my god, he rules. He still rules with an iron fist. Or to go back to Nixon. Nonetheless I have a certain sympathy for Nixon. His fall was the last authentic Oedipal fall. An authority figure of authority got involved in its own crimes and so on fell down. With Reagan totally different logic entered where it's part of playing of being an authority to make fun of itself, of your own stupidity and so on and so on. I mean if you look from our cynical openly cynical era back a little bit. It's interesting to look at how what new style Reagan introduced. For example in his rare he was afraid of open interviews because he was afraid of being caught at his stupidity. But once by a mistake they allowed at the White House press conference a journalist who asked him an aggressive question basically the the accusation was you are lying here. You know what was Reagan's answer? Openly. Check it up I did. You find it somewhere on YouTube, you find everything there. The answer was listen, you know me, you know that I'm too stupid to lie in such complex matters and so on and so on. I mean it's unimaginable before for for presidents to talk like this. And even Clinton is unfortunately part of this let's call it revolution ironically and so on. So again I totally agree with you that much more interesting than the content is how in the media in or in the functioning of authority the style, the form is changing. And I think this tell this I think tells tells us a lot of how of how power again how should I put it, power is functioning is functioning in a different way. If I may just add another comment I think it was deeply correct that you mentioned this what was your other term? Not direct censorship but this soft censorship a what term did you use something like rel- reduced or what? Oh relative exclusion. Yeah, I would simply call it what in Freud they called Isolierung, like it is reported in the media but it's as if reported in an isolated way so that the proper political resonance is precluded, excluded. Let me give you an example from this last weeks. All our attention is focused on Libya and so on, more about this later. But did you noticed a topic which again we were not lied on, it was reported. But no echo. What happened in Bahrain? My god, there were the majority demonstrations in Bahrain. They were squashed. How? Another state's army, Saudi Arabia came there directly intervened to squash popular demonstrations in the Egyptian style. We all celebrate Egypt. There were absolutely not that I remember any serious reactions to that. It was simply isolated. Why? Because it runs totally against all this image of the West supporting democratic revolutions and so on and so on. Let me tell you another thing which is of the same order. Let's take what is going on on the West Bank and again my source here are my Jewish friends. And now comes the trick. Big media, what I will tell you now, you know what's the source? New York Times and Time magazine where I learned that every fall when there is harvest time for olives on the West Bank, the settlers are literally burning thousands of trees, poisoning water up to killing at least a dozen dozen Palestinian farmer families and burning mosques even one or two every fall. Everybody knows it. Again it was reported in the media but somehow we didn't really take it in because if we were to take it in then it would ruin this idea that somehow time goes on then just from time to time some mad Palestinians do some killings and so on and so on. I'm not in any way supporting Palestinians sorry I mean so-called Palestinian terror. What I am just saying is my god, where is this background? The constant the constant I cannot call it but terror from settlers and we should go here even one step further. To claim that settlers are not simply just crazy settlers because every liberal Israeli will tell you yeah yeah, they are those Russian origin members in a nice racist way they often that's what they told me they tell you you know half of them we know are not even Jews we just allowed them to emigrate from Russia and so on. But the the truly disgusting play is the play that the Israeli Tel Aviv elite plays with these settlers. They use them, settlers are basically most of them pure Russian origins naive. They use them to do the dirty job and then of course from time to time they castigate them and so on. For example often Palestinians then make an appeal to Supreme Court for the and of course Supreme Court every 10th 20th case they make a decision in favoring Palestinians. But it's clear what's happening that you know they do this so that they can save their legal face. You see what legal democracy we are, legalist blah blah blah but basically this is marginal. The terror goes on. And again no, I didn't get this from some Al-Qaeda Bill Ten or again my source here is exclusively Time maybe Newsweek I'm not sure I think it was more Time, New York Times, not even Guardian. Not even this left. But you see my point? You don't have to to go there to see some authentic firsthand experience. This is for me a nice example of what you mention this exclusive approach. It is there just this is the material power of ideology. It is there but somehow we don't connect it. It doesn't click. It it is to use this old Levi-Strauss term it's deprived of its symbolic efficiency let's call it like that. And here just to go to the end with you it's for example my own experiences here. Me as a clown and so on and so on. A a year ago Spiegel, the big German weekly, asked me to do a long interview with me. I said naively I made a mistake yes. Then a guy even came to Ljubljana talked with me for four-five hours a day for three consecutive days and then I was pretty shocked at the result because I took especially care of in a self-ironic way diminishing my quota of obscenity and jokes. I went very patiently into why Marx what does it mean blah blah all of then what I read there it was absolutely shocking. You learn absolutely nothing about my theory, mostly just that it's some confusion of where Marx and psychoanalysis are brought together with some other fashionable trends but most of it was how of my how my apartment looks, how I dress in comparison with Toni Negri and Alain Badiou and so on and some of this type this type of jokes. Although the guy pretends not to agree with it, he reports on all the polemics I was involved in Germany which are for me totally shameless. For example that the New Republic stuff was widely circulated and translated namely that idea that I that I publicly support a new Holocaust, the killing of all Jews except those who are critical of the state of Israel and which is for me again. I simply thought a direct lie like this is not possible. The origin is a very simple one of this. Yes, I say this. But I say this in a line of thought which is absolutely unambiguously just the the resume of the thought of my enemy. Namely this is what Jean-Claude Milner in his book Criminal Tendencies of Contemporary Democratic Europe whatever attributes to not even to leftists, for him this is at the very base of European Union project. That what stands as an obstacle to European Union are the Jews who don't want to dissolve their specific status so they should all be killed and so on. I mean I ironically resume this and it's breathtaking how public argumentation which is not even argumentation works. I played the naive liberal game I wrote some letters to German media and so on none of them was published. The only reactions I got were in the style yeah yeah, now now Žižek tries to convince us that he didn't really mean what he says that he meant it differently but ha ha ha we see how he tries no. I didn't claim that I meant it differently. I claim very clearly that I didn't mean that at all and that it's absolutely clear from the line of thought. But again you cannot you cannot get the message through. You simply cannot get the message through. Now and I simply decided to to ignore it totally. Not to mention for example that problem with Hitler when I wrote the problem with Hitler is that he wasn't violent enough. Of course this was a provocation. But my god, if you read not all the book just that page it's clear when you mentioned Hannah Arendt in what sense I meant that. As a further criticism of Hitler. Maybe you know the story I'm sorry if you do I will briefly repeat it. What bothered me is the horror of now the recent trend in some post-communist East European countries where you have this vague not so much rehabilitation as fascination by Hitler. Maybe you know the story I'm sorry if I repeat myself I remember some four-five years ago a Slovenian top sportsman skiing when asked are you ready for tomorrow's slalom he said ready like the German army on the 22nd June in the morning. Then of course there was an outcry. Then he said no, no, no, I know Hitler did crimes but I only wanted to say in spite of the crimes he did he had balls, courage and so on. And my idea was following Hannah Arendt that this is already too much to give to the Nazis. No, Hitler was not this kind of a Byronesque heroic figure of evil who is evil but you know in his very evil heroic fascinating. Hannah Arendt you know where she is good otherwise I don't always of course we don't agree with her. When she drew attention to the ambiguity of the Nazi dismissal of you know Nazi heroism against this small petty bourgeoisie daily life and so on. She said no, Hitler was really serving these very cheap commercial interests that he was making fun of and pretending to despise all the time. That was my point that you give too much to Hitler to treat him as this kind of a hero. No, Hitler was not even in this evil sense a hero. Hitler did all the killings because he was afraid to he did all the killings because he was afraid to do a little bit a bit modest change where it would really have mattered. To I'm here an old-fashioned Marxist the problem for Hitler was how to save the capitalist system and so on. And in this sense then I add but that I am for violence but in the sense in which Gandhi is more violent than Hitler. Because again Hitler had to kill millions because he was afraid to do a real change in the relations of production, state machinery. While Gandhi at least did really try to stop the functioning of the British state and so on and so on. Nonetheless again you cannot get now again friends are all the time my German friends telling me clips from the news: ah, I'm the guy who secretly tried to rehabilitate Hitler. And I know I am it's lost, the game is lost. But you know what? I think there are enough kind people like I hope you who somehow at least are marginally open to it and I simply resigned to it. I mean I I think one should maybe even stop worrying about it. But I was going to ask having said that we were talking before structural forms of exclusion as well as the relative forms of exclusion. I'm guessing quite a few of you have seen the pervert's guide to cinema. I haven't, okay but. No I'm not kidding. That's why just an apology and what I should have said. I'm very grateful for you from what we're talking for your book I will try to read it. Your book on me. No, no, no it's not you, it's me. I maybe secretly despise myself so much yeah. No, no, no it's me that should do this my god. Because I am it's very difficult for me to accept the fact that I'm taken seriously enough that books are written about me and then I'm terrified like no, this cannot be really about me. Well if it's any consolation it's been career suicide for me. Ah, that's nice, that's nice. That's a first, I shut you up. Yeah, that's nice, so that I can now hypocritically say, oh I'm so sorry oh what can I do for you, of course nothing. That's when you offer help when you can be sure that you can't do anything. No, okay sorry let's go on please because I have more serious things to say. No what I was going to ask was a lot of people might have seen the pervert's guide to cinema and I was aware that you were trying to make the pervert's guide to ideology and from memory you told me Ralph Fiennes was on your side etc because Sophie Fiennes was involved in the original. Now I'm just curious as to A how that's going because last I heard was it's not going anywhere but B isn't that indicative? And now you're doing the same thing to me now like you are wishing me all the best because you know that it means nothing. Okay, sorry yeah okay Sophie. No so I'm just curious yeah if you can't with your profile in the number of books you've sold etc if you can't get to make a basic series on ideology who can? No but again up to a point it was simply all this mess with Labour losing and funds cutting and all these changes in the British media scene. So up to a point it was objective we were victims of circumstances. Up to a point it was as some of you already know this old story of mine a joke which isn't a joke but reality Sophie told me that one of the reasons again at Channel at some point these are other people who were there in charge two years ago was that they said that it's a very good project but why this title: Pervert's Guide to Ideology? We no longer have ideology today no, we are in post-ideological era. So they seriously suggested something like their suggestion literally: Pervert's Guide to Contemporary Spiritual Tendencies no, like it they say it means the same but it's more appropriate. No, but the good news is that now big victory for progressive forces for to put it in Stalinist term the progressive unity of working class, poor farmers, patriotic bourgeoisie and honest intellectuals. We are all together we start shooting in Dublin in a month. Brilliant. So we will do it, we will do it. We did, yeah finally. In between it was Sophie Fiennes' feminist betrayal. We could have start shooting already a year ago but she got pregnant and I told her mmm betraying for earthly pleasures and so on. This next question is in revenge so I introduced Slavoj before in the bar to a friend of a good friend of mine David Tom and Slavoj's opening gambit was you remind I may have seen you before you look like a rapist. In some movie yeah. So having used that interesting opening gambit with my friend David, would please don't take this the wrong way but in the film The Piano Teacher, the rapist gives back in a highly traumatic and horrible way to the woman fantasizing. Would it be a fair depiction of what you try and do with the media that you're giving back to the media the fantasies it doesn't want to acknowledge? Yeah you can say this because although I must do a little bit of self-criticism there. I hope you saw the movie, Haneke's movie based on Elfriede Jelinek novel. It's interesting how here I am self-critical in my reading of the movie I in a typical male patriarchal way misread the ending. I misread it as a tragic ending you know, she is stabbed by the guy or whatever like as if she is on her way to death. And then I some friends of mine who even some of them Austrians knew Elfriede Jelinek and told me wait a minute I've spoken with her it's not true and then I looked at the movie again yes, it was my projection. On the other hand no, it's a liberation. Her wound is more like that Fight Club hitting because at it's kind of she gets rid of it. It's an
That moralistic critique is part of our media. So I agree here with you absolutely that here I agree that this serious approach can be even more dangerous. For example, people often mock me, attack me where and say my god, you complain about capitalism but aren't all the media full of anti-capitalism today? You cannot open a newspaper and not find reports on that company is using slave slave labor in its outsourced units, that company is polluting environment, that bank is getting state state funded blah. Yeah, but it's always a personal corruption and as such open to so-called investigative journalism to be resolved through moral openness and so on and so on. But I think that precisely this type of anti-capitalist moralism is the most tricky. Because again let me return to All the President's Men. Where does ideol- ideology enter? Well ideology enters with just ask yourself a question why do movies like All the President's Men and I know it's based on Bernstein, Woodward and so on and movies like Pelican Brief. Why do they make us, why when we leave the hall we have such a good feeling and so on? Because with all the corruption which reaches the very top shown, the message isn't the message basic message my god, what a great society we live in where look, two ordinary guy journalists can overthrow the mightiest man in the world, the US president and so on and so on. No, the serious approach to Nixon begins with how was it possible, which and I'm not playing any leftist paranoia, just common sense. It is obvious that some of the strong elements in that whatever you call it military-industrial complex must have at a certain point they must have decided enough of Nixon for whatever reasons maybe China I don't know what to get rid of him. I would like to hear I would like to hear that story. So again here it's the only thing that I would have done I agree with you. Even with philosophy I would go as far as if to say no, the true danger is not media denouncing me as clown, jester. Although now it changed interestingly. It's not only clown jester it's the deadly jester, you know. Oh yeah, yeah. And this is I think an interesting shift that they are nonetheless some people starting to take us in a negative way seriously. Till five years ago I was, yeah, you should go and listen that guy he is funny all the dirty jokes don't take him seriously but it's amusing. Now more and more, even more than here in the UK in Germany, in France it's changing into don't be deceived by this clownish surface, behind it there is a deadly dangerous corruptive message, you know. It's just a okay. But what I'm saying is that I prefer to be treated like that than to play this image of like de Botton and others, this kind of a public wis- kind of wisdom and so on. But again I would not underestimate to return to Nixon the other side of functioning. Look, everybody laughs at Berlusconi in Italy. It's a jester and so on. Yeah, but my god, he rules. He still rules with an iron fist. Or to go back to Nixon. Nonetheless I have a certain sympathy for Nixon. His fall was the last authentic Oedipal fall. An authority figure of authority got involved in its own crimes and so on fell down. With Reagan totally different logic entered where it's part of playing of being an authority to make fun of itself, of your own stupidity and so on and so on. I mean if you look from our cynical openly cynical era back a little bit. It's interesting to look at how what new style Reagan introduced. For example in his rare he was afraid of open interviews because he was afraid of being caught at his stupidity. But once by a mistake they allowed at the White House press conference a journalist who asked him an aggressive question basically the the accusation was you are lying here. You know what was Reagan's answer? Openly. Check it up I did. You find it somewhere on YouTube, you find everything there. The answer was listen, you know me, you know that I'm too stupid to lie in such complex matters and so on and so on. I mean it's unimaginable before for for presidents to talk like this. And even Clinton is unfortunately part of this let's call it revolution ironically and so on. So again I totally agree with you that much more interesting than the content is how in the media in or in the functioning of authority the style, the form is changing. And I think this tell this I think tells tells us a lot of how of how power again how should I put it, power is functioning is functioning in a different way. If I may just add another comment I think it was deeply correct that you mentioned this what was your other term? Not direct censorship but this soft censorship a what term did you use something like rel- reduced or what? Oh relative exclusion. Yeah, I would simply call it what in Freud they called Isolierung, like it is reported in the media but it's as if reported in an isolated way so that the proper political resonance is precluded, excluded. Let me give you an example from this last weeks. All our attention is focused on Libya and so on, more about this later. But did you noticed a topic which again we were not lied on, it was reported. But no echo. What happened in Bahrain? My god, there were the majority demonstrations in Bahrain. They were squashed. How? Another state's army, Saudi Arabia came there directly intervened to squash popular demonstrations in the Egyptian style. We all celebrate Egypt. There were absolutely not that I remember any serious reactions to that. It was simply isolated. Why? Because it runs totally against all this image of the West supporting democratic revolutions and so on and so on. Let me tell you another thing which is of the same order. Let's take what is going on on the West Bank and again my source here are my Jewish friends. And now comes the trick. Big media, what I will tell you now, you know what's the source? New York Times and Time magazine where I learned that every fall when there is harvest time for olives on the West Bank, the settlers are literally burning thousands of trees, poisoning water up to killing at least a dozen dozen Palestinian farmer families and burning mosques even one or two every fall. Everybody knows it. Again it was reported in the media but somehow we didn't really take it in because if we were to take it in then it would ruin this idea that somehow time goes on then just from time to time some mad Palestinians do some killings and so on and so on. I'm not in any way supporting Palestinians sorry I mean so-called Palestinian terror. What I am just saying is my god, where is this background? The constant the constant I cannot call it but terror from settlers and we should go here even one step further. To claim that settlers are not simply just crazy settlers because every liberal Israeli will tell you yeah yeah, they are those Russian origin members in a nice racist way they often that's what they told me they tell you you know half of them we know are not even Jews we just allowed them to emigrate from Russia and so on. But the the truly disgusting play is the play that the Israeli Tel Aviv elite plays with these settlers. They use them, settlers are basically most of them pure Russian origins naive. They use them to do the dirty job and then of course from time to time they castigate them and so on. For example often Palestinians then make an appeal to Supreme Court for the and of course Supreme Court every 10th 20th case they make a decision in favoring Palestinians. But it's clear what's happening that you know they do this so that they can save their legal face. You see what legal democracy we are, legalist blah blah blah but basically this is marginal. The terror goes on. And again no, I didn't get this from some Al-Qaeda Bill Ten or again my source here is exclusively Time maybe Newsweek I'm not sure I think it was more Time, New York Times, not even Guardian. Not even this left. But you see my point? You don't have to to go there to see some authentic firsthand experience. This is for me a nice example of what you mention this exclusive approach. It is there just this is the material power of ideology. It is there but somehow we don't connect it. It doesn't click. It it is to use this old Levi-Strauss term it's deprived of its symbolic efficiency let's call it like that. And here just to go to the end with you it's for example my own experiences here. Me as a clown and so on and so on. A a year ago Spiegel, the big German weekly, asked me to do a long interview with me. I said naively I made a mistake yes. Then a guy even came to Ljubljana talked with me for four-five hours a day for three consecutive days and then I was pretty shocked at the result because I took especially care of in a self-ironic way diminishing my quota of obscenity and jokes. I went very patiently into why Marx what does it mean blah blah all of then what I read there it was absolutely shocking. You learn absolutely nothing about my theory, mostly just that it's some confusion of where Marx and psychoanalysis are brought together with some other fashionable trends but most of it was how of my how my apartment looks, how I dress in comparison with Toni Negri and Alain Badiou and so on and some of this type this type of jokes. Although the guy pretends not to agree with it, he reports on all the polemics I was involved in Germany which are for me totally shameless. For example that the New Republic stuff was widely circulated and translated namely that idea that I that I publicly support a new Holocaust, the killing of all Jews except those who are critical of the state of Israel and which is for me again. I simply thought a direct lie like this is not possible. The origin is a very simple one of this. Yes, I say this. But I say this in a line of thought which is absolutely unambiguously just the the resume of the thought of my enemy. Namely this is what Jean-Claude Milner in his book Criminal Tendencies of Contemporary Democratic Europe whatever attributes to not even to leftists, for him this is at the very base of European Union project. That what stands as an obstacle to European Union are the Jews who don't want to dissolve their specific status so they should all be killed and so on. I mean I ironically resume this and it's breathtaking how public argumentation which is not even argumentation works. I played the naive liberal game I wrote some letters to German media and so on none of them was published. The only reactions I got were in the style yeah yeah, now now Žižek tries to convince us that he didn't really mean what he says that he meant it differently but ha ha ha we see how he tries no. I didn't claim that I meant it differently. I claim very clearly that I didn't mean that at all and that it's absolutely clear from the line of thought. But again you cannot you cannot get the message through. You simply cannot get the message through. Now and I simply decided to to ignore it totally. Not to mention for example that problem with Hitler when I wrote the problem with Hitler is that he wasn't violent enough. Of course this was a provocation. But my god, if you read not all the book just that page it's clear when you mentioned Hannah Arendt in what sense I meant that. As a further criticism of Hitler. Maybe you know the story I'm sorry if you do I will briefly repeat it. What bothered me is the horror of now the recent trend in some post-communist East European countries where you have this vague not so much rehabilitation as fascination by Hitler. Maybe you know the story I'm sorry if I repeat myself I remember some four-five years ago a Slovenian top sportsman skiing when asked are you ready for tomorrow's slalom he said ready like the German army on the 22nd June in the morning. Then of course there was an outcry. Then he said no, no, no, I know Hitler did crimes but I only wanted to say in spite of the crimes he did he had balls, courage and so on. And my idea was following Hannah Arendt that this is already too much to give to the Nazis. No, Hitler was not this kind of a Byronesque heroic figure of evil who is evil but you know in his very evil heroic fascinating. Hannah Arendt you know where she is good otherwise I don't always of course we don't agree with her. When she drew attention to the ambiguity of the Nazi dismissal of you know Nazi heroism against this small petty bourgeoisie daily life and so on. She said no, Hitler was really serving these very cheap commercial interests that he was making fun of and pretending to despise all the time. That was my point that you give too much to Hitler to treat him as this kind of a hero. No, Hitler was not even in this evil sense a hero. Hitler did all the killings because he was afraid to he did all the killings because he was afraid to do a little bit a bit modest change where it would really have mattered. To I'm here an old-fashioned Marxist the problem for Hitler was how to save the capitalist system and so on. And in this sense then I add but that I am for violence but in the sense in which Gandhi is more violent than Hitler. Because again Hitler had to kill millions because he was afraid to do a real change in the relations of production, state machinery. While Gandhi at least did really try to stop the functioning of the British state and so on and so on. Nonetheless again you cannot get now again friends are all the time my German friends telling me clips from the news: ah, I'm the guy who secretly tried to rehabilitate Hitler. And I know I am it's lost, the game is lost. But you know what? I think there are enough kind people like I hope you who somehow at least are marginally open to it and I simply resigned to it. I mean I I think one should maybe even stop worrying about it. But I was going to ask having said that we were talking before structural forms of exclusion as well as the relative forms of exclusion. I'm guessing quite a few of you have seen the pervert's guide to cinema. I haven't, okay but. No I'm not kidding. That's why just an apology and what I should have said. I'm very grateful for you from what we're talking for your book I will try to read it. Your book on me. No, no, no it's not you, it's me. I maybe secretly despise myself so much yeah. No, no, no it's me that should do this my god. Because I am it's very difficult for me to accept the fact that I'm taken seriously enough that books are written about me and then I'm terrified like no, this cannot be really about me. Well if it's any consolation it's been career suicide for me. Ah, that's nice, that's nice. That's a first, I shut you up. Yeah, that's nice, so that I can now hypocritically say, oh I'm so sorry oh what can I do for you, of course nothing. That's when you offer help when you can be sure that you can't do anything. No, okay sorry let's go on please because I have more serious things to say. No what I was going to ask was a lot of people might have seen the pervert's guide to cinema and I was aware that you were trying to make the pervert's guide to ideology and from memory you told me Ralph Fiennes was on your side etc because Sophie Fiennes was involved in the original. Now I'm just curious as to A how that's going because last I heard was it's not going anywhere but B isn't that indicative? And now you're doing the same thing to me now like you are wishing me all the best because you know that it means nothing. Okay, sorry yeah okay Sophie. No so I'm just curious yeah if you can't with your profile in the number of books you've sold etc if you can't get to make a basic series on ideology who can? No but again up to a point it was simply all this mess with Labour losing and funds cutting and all these changes in the British media scene. So up to a point it was objective we were victims of circumstances. Up to a point it was as some of you already know this old story of mine a joke which isn't a joke but reality Sophie told me that one of the reasons again at Channel at some point these are other people who were there in charge two years ago was that they said that it's a very good project but why this title: Pervert's Guide to Ideology? We no longer have ideology today no, we are in post-ideological era. So they seriously suggested something like their suggestion literally: Pervert's Guide to Contemporary Spiritual Tendencies no, like it they say it means the same but it's more appropriate. No, but the good news is that now big victory for progressive forces for to put it in Stalinist term the progressive unity of working class, poor farmers, patriotic bourgeoisie and honest intellectuals. We are all together we start shooting in Dublin in a month. Brilliant. So we will do it, we will do it. We did, yeah finally. In between it was Sophie Fiennes' feminist betrayal. We could have start shooting already a year ago but she got pregnant and I told her mmm betraying for earthly pleasures and so on. This next question is in revenge so I introduced Slavoj before in the bar to a friend of a good friend of mine David Tom and Slavoj's opening gambit was you remind I may have seen you before you look like a rapist. In some movie yeah. So having used that interesting opening gambit with my friend David, would please don't take this the wrong way but in the film The Piano Teacher, the rapist gives back in a highly traumatic and horrible way to the woman fantasizing. Would it be a fair depiction of what you try and do with the media that you're giving back to the media the fantasies it doesn't want to acknowledge? Yeah you can say this because although I must do a little bit of self-criticism there. I hope you saw the movie, Haneke's movie based on Elfriede Jelinek novel. It's interesting how here I am self-critical in my reading of the movie I in a typical male patriarchal way misread the ending. I misread it as a tragic ending you know, she is stabbed by the guy or whatever like as if she is on her way to death. And then I some friends of mine who even some of them Austrians knew Elfriede Jelinek and told me wait a minute I've spoken with her it's not true and then I looked at the movie again yes, it was my projection. On the other hand no, it's a liberation. Her wound is more like that Fight Club hitting because at it's kind of she gets rid of it. It's an
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optimistic movie in a typical way it's typical trace of male chauvinism I misread feminine liberation as her self-destruction and so on no. Which in a way if I may now make another point about the media and ideology. It's I'm again and
optimistic movie in a typical way it's typical trace of male chauvinism I misread feminine liberation as her self-destruction and so on no. Which in a way if I may now make another point about the media and ideology. It's I'm again and
Slavoj Žižek
again shocked how you know we
again shocked how you know we
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intellectuals when we
intellectuals when we
Slavoj Žižek
develop a certain theory you often caught yourself not really believing it and you are quite surprised when you really get it no. So I was quite surprised with this year's Oscars in what a clean way the two big movies the two winners The King's Speech and Black Swan how they exactly reproduce the worst reactionary trends of our predicament. First, The King's
develop a certain theory you often caught yourself not really believing it and you are quite surprised when you really get it no. So I was quite surprised with this year's Oscars in what a clean way the two big movies the two winners The King's Speech and Black Swan how they exactly reproduce the worst reactionary trends of our predicament. First, The King's
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Speech. It's what's happening there? I think the king, the originally the king person what is he? Stuttering
Speech. It's what's happening there? I think the king, the originally the king person what is he? Stuttering
Slavoj Žižek
unable to
unable to
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speak in public
speak in public
Slavoj Žižek
and if you know the story it's clear that this has nothing to do with any personal trauma or whatever it is simply a quite reasonable I claim rejection of any normal individual to play the role of the king. I
and if you know the story it's clear that this has nothing to do with any personal trauma or whatever it is simply a quite reasonable I claim rejection of any normal individual to play the role of the king. I
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mean it's this basically his stuttering is a hysterical in a progressive good sense resistance to like sorry it's too stupid for me I cannot take that seriously. It's the difficulty of assuming of playing part in investiture of assuming a certain role. And I think that the function of that good Australian guy blah blah played by
mean it's this basically his stuttering is a hysterical in a progressive good sense resistance to like sorry it's too stupid for me I cannot take that seriously. It's the difficulty of assuming of playing part in investiture of assuming a certain role. And I think that the function of that good Australian guy blah blah played by
Slavoj Žižek
Geoffrey Rush his language teacher is precisely to make him stupid enough to identify with the role, to be able to play the
Geoffrey Rush his language teacher is precisely to make him stupid enough to identify with the role, to be able to play the
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role. Because remember the final conversation between the two of them when to provoke him Geoffrey Rush the teacher sits on the king's chair even throne whatever no and
role. Because remember the final conversation between the two of them when to provoke him Geoffrey Rush the teacher sits on the king's chair even throne whatever no and
Slavoj Žižek
then the king future no, he is already king at that point or we shouts at him how dare you sit there this is my seat. And then Geoffrey Rush the teacher ask him provocatively but why should this be your seat? Why not me? And the king says because by divine order I am a king and so on and so on. He says the full stupidity and of course then Geoffrey Rush say okay Your Majesty now like now you are. So it's a very sad story of taking a normal act of resistance and crushing it down so that you can in a stupid way play your role. But it's and I think that today this is precisely the reactionary option. It's no, we make fun of the time nobody takes authority seriously and so on. So the point is we should take our paternal or whatever role seriously. With Black Swan it's even worse I think. I know I'm giving you a very simplified analysis but it's quite symmetrical. With the male person at least you have the option of taking your role seriously but nonetheless having some private life where you have your happiness and so on. We know that all good kings privately mock their role but they can play the role and so on. But with the Black Swan okay it's much more complex but the basic thesis premise of the film I think I hope you noticed how
then the king future no, he is already king at that point or we shouts at him how dare you sit there this is my seat. And then Geoffrey Rush the teacher ask him provocatively but why should this be your seat? Why not me? And the king says because by divine order I am a king and so on and so on. He says the full stupidity and of course then Geoffrey Rush say okay Your Majesty now like now you are. So it's a very sad story of taking a normal act of resistance and crushing it down so that you can in a stupid way play your role. But it's and I think that today this is precisely the reactionary option. It's no, we make fun of the time nobody takes authority seriously and so on. So the point is we should take our paternal or whatever role seriously. With Black Swan it's even worse I think. I know I'm giving you a very simplified analysis but it's quite symmetrical. With the male person at least you have the option of taking your role seriously but nonetheless having some private life where you have your happiness and so on. We know that all good kings privately mock their role but they can play the role and so on. But with the Black Swan okay it's much more complex but the basic thesis premise of the film I think I hope you noticed how
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disgusting it is. It is that again in contrast to men who can fully assume his symbolic title his mission and still have a let's call it normal private life, with a woman you cannot. If you fully dedicate yourself to your mission, in this case to be a ballerina, you pay the price with death. And this is the old reactionary theory you must know it from different stories fairy tale or whatever you know, usually just it's not ballerina usually it's voice. You know for example here Kieslowski
disgusting it is. It is that again in contrast to men who can fully assume his symbolic title his mission and still have a let's call it normal private life, with a woman you cannot. If you fully dedicate yourself to your mission, in this case to be a ballerina, you pay the price with death. And this is the old reactionary theory you must know it from different stories fairy tale or whatever you know, usually just it's not ballerina usually it's voice. You know for example here Kieslowski
Slavoj Žižek
is
is
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deeply in this reactionary trend The Double Life of Veronique. You must choose either life or career singing. It's inter- now
deeply in this reactionary trend The Double Life of Veronique. You must choose either life or career singing. It's inter- now
Slavoj Žižek
you will say but this is just physical illness. Yes but it happens to a woman, not to a man. I know four-five movies where a woman has to choose between career and health or family. She chooses career and she dies. I've never seen not even one film about men having to suffer this predicament. So again I think it's a deeply reactionary film where basically the lesson is woman's place is not the public career, if she does that it's in the long term suicidal. Or then you have of course always the exception, the exception are there Margaret Thatcher figures like but there are women who have balls and so on but that's another story. But so you see how this is what shocks me how even here you find ideology. Or if you permit me another old story it really shocked me. Did you notice something strange in the last James Bond film Quantum of Solace. I'm not talking about politics. Politically it's very progressive I would say. Basically to cut a long story short James Bond saves Evo Morales from some reactionary from some false ecological company who really wants to control water resources and so on. But did you notice something else in the final scene? It's the first James Bond film with no sex. No sex at the end between James Bond and and Bond girl. They just embrace and say okay we are both too traumatized and so on and so on. Now you will say this is one example. Ah, now let's go much lower than James Bond: Dan Brown. Did you notice something strange in one of the great candidates of the worst movie of worst book of all times, The Lost Symbol. There is a couple Robert Langdon and some scientist woman. Look at me, I haven't read it. We will establish what you are reading don't be. But there absolutely not even a sexual tension. Even already in Da Vinci Code, no sex. Angels Demons even more interesting. There is sex in the novel between Robert Langdon and that Vittoria Vetra, the Italian scientist woman who helps him. But now comes a strange thing: there is sex in the novel, there is no sex in the movie. Wait a minute, what we were usually used to is that Hollywood adds sex to make it more commercial. Now we have Hollywood censoring, deleting sex. I don't think this is a progressive move, I think I agree here with Alain Badiou who developed this in his last book, that this is all part of this extremely narcissistic trend when even a passionate sex or love engagement is considered too traumatic, something that opens us too much, that may disturb our narcissistic balance and so on and so on. It's the same reason for which as Badiou noted we are now witnessing a strange rehabilitation of the ancient tradition of pre-arranged marriages. The only difference being that in the old times it was the family counselor whoever relatives who did it, now we have all these dating or marriage agencies and as Badiou noticed it's a wonderful detail of how they call them, sorry of Badiou found an agency in France he found the ad of course he's not looking. Where they say they use French the same: tomber amoureux to fall in love, that we will enable you to be in love without the fall, without falling in love. You see the idea is precisely to avoid that dangerous moment of where you are struck with it, you fall, you lose no, it will be all part of your of your of your homeostatic economy, no risk, no opening involved. So again at this level we should look at ideology at ideology today. This is where media fascinate me but I talk too much let's. And just one thing when you mentioned London School of Economics no? Okay it's easy to make Libya yeah. It's easy yeah. It's easy to make Libyan School of Economics. Yeah there is no. Maybe there is a mistake here in the very way of my argumentation. You know which one? Because there is one thing apropos Libyan crisis which shocked me. Really shocked me. Did you noticed something strange in how not how the media covered it, there it's clear what is happening why the media love the Egyptian crisis, sorry the Libyan crisis because it's a renormalization. With Egypt it was a democratic opening but we really didn't like it blah blah blah. It we were uneasy. With Libya it's back to old waters you know, bad guy of evil, humanitarian crisis, humanitarian intervention rehabilitated. It was a kind of a we return to old well-known coordinates. But what really bothered me and I think this shows the decadence I'm using this term in a fully conscious way, the decadence of the West of the Western so-called radical left. Now correct me if I am wrong but my impression was that the large majority of leftist even left liberal but even more radical leftist critics of Western intervention in Libya, they were almost all obsessed with this question of sincerity. Like is it really for helping the victims there or is it about oil interests political blah blah blah. My god, I was shocked by this. Where did the left arrive at to be even thinking in these terms? They behaved as disappointed lovers, as if they secretly expected a pure humanitarian intervention but then no, no, no, you don't really love me because like. I mean you know who gave me this wonderful idea critical? My good Indian friend Saroj Giri. Who said he was shocked and he told me he wrote then about it a wonderful similar story about Nepal. When the Nepalese Maoists were close to taking power, India planned to give arms to the royal army of course. And all the Indian left played the same game: oh, they are not giving arms just to keep peace, it's a brutal political intervention to blah blah blah, let's not blah blah. And then came a shock: the Nepalese Maoists finally couldn't stand it and exploded and said: stop it. Do you know what you are doing? Are you aware that that more than half of the royal army is already penetrated by our agents? Are you aware that most of the arms given to the army come to us? So please at least think what you are doing, stop with this moralism and ask the elementary question: what will these arms what will be their function? Who will take them and so on and so on. And I think the same thing should be here. Screw sincerity. The question to be asked of one should assume automatically not even debate it that to use the old Stalinist why not term imperialist forces when they intervene they intervene for also for political, economic interests and so on. One should we shouldn't even be debating it. The only question to be asked is whom will these arms deliver there serve and so on and so on. And here I'm much more a radically leftist cynic. I don't know enough about the situation there. But if people I have no sympathy for Gaddafi. But if people who are rebelling Gaddafi are potentially a genuine independent Libyan movement then I say yes, give them arms and maybe the story of Afghanistan will repeat itself and ten years later they will maybe even use these arms against NATO and so on and so on. My god, stop with this moralism ask the real question. I don't care if they are sincere or not but what does it mean politically for power relations there these arms, who will use these arms and so on and so on. And if our judgment is that there is a serious possibility of how should I call it progressive use, then why not? Let's not be moralists here. But especially let's not get caught in these how should I call them in these in these moral in these let's not get caught in these moralistic games. And the last political point very quickly that I'd like to make is a proof that nonetheless we theorists, dreamers and so on are getting dangerous. My god, this made me so satisfied. Namely I thought it's a joke and then I emailed my Chinese friends and they confirmed it to me: it's not a joke. You know that about three weeks ago I think the Chinese government okay, Ministry of Culture whatever formally, it's an official act, prohibited on their movie screens and on TV prohibited all the movies or on TV and theater all the movies or TV stories which deal with time travel and alternate history. With the justification was that such stories I quote: introduce frivolity into serious historical matters. But isn't this a wonderful example of how those in power are afraid even of a story about alternate reality like that, it may give wrong idea to people and so on and so on no. I think this is our reality more and more. Although of course we do have alternate reality stories, but we do it just more efficiently. The problem is how to how to how to how should I put it how to limit, how to constrain political imagination. Now I've talked too much let's Gemma do we have time for one more? Yeah. Well I'll double up on the question because it would be good to get some questions from the audience but is there I've confessed that I really love Spartacus: Gods of the Arena. This not the old movie which is too moral. No, no the new HBO Kirk Douglas movie it's kind of Hollywood progressive moralism horrible. It's so tasteless it's unbelievable. But the other thing I'd recommend to the audience is It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, if you ever see that it's a US import. Danny DeVito in the latter stages of his career just giving up all notions. My tastes are lower, I advise you Fast Five this is. So is there any TV series like those which have unexpectedly made you think? Okay, now it's an old story that I will repeat and it will be a shock to you. I changed my mind I'm ready to rehabilitate it. I think the last two installments seven and eight are the best of radically progressive Hollywood. Now you think I'm crazy. Did you see the last two? Not only are there at the level of content almost naive in a even too naive Marxist way progressive. Like you know for example one before the last I think it's seven or six seven yes. You know at the beginning it looks like Muslim terrorism then you learn it's all staged by an American defense company which wants to push Pentagon into an exclusive deal. So it's this elementary leftist twist from external threat to an internal enemy. Point two: it's even too sentimental but nonetheless a nice too political correct maybe moment when when Jack Bauer thinks that he is dying of some radiation he calls a Muslim priest whom he even mistreated before claiming he is the only the only friend I have. But what I found okay this is the usual left Hollywood left, this is not enough. But what I liked is the final predicament that you get. How the series at the end presents us with two-three positions which are all portrayed as desperate. Jack Bauer does not end as this kind of a the right-wingers like it, this kind of a I sacrifice myself by doing behind the scenes the brutal cruel stuff torturing and so on because somebody the true hero has to do the job. No, at the end he is totally broken. He says I cannot live with what I am doing, it should he says it should all get into public. This is unbearable I will never find my peace. So there is no justification in this way then his counterpart, the ethical figure of the president, the woman Alison Taylor also gets caught in a similar game and steps down at the end. So at the end you have a total deadlock. No uplifting message. He is obliterated, totally broken, she the liberal face admits her inconsistency. Sorry, but this at least is what honest analysis shows us. No cheap way out. Neither the right-wing justification you know, this kind of a simple the most disgusting version, no heroism of somebody has to do the dirty job blah blah nor this easy liberal Pelican Brief or whatever you know, the good liberals tell the torturers, ah no, we can do it in a human way otherwise we will become like them and so on or whatever. No, it just ends in a total ethical deadlock. I'm sorry to tell you but this is quite something I think, much more. I I haven't finished the boxset yet so thanks for that. I haven't finished the boxset. Sorry? I haven't finished the boxset. Are you stupid? I didn't watch it, I just report on I read about it, who has time to watch this stuff? The last thing you know what you should think about? How another if you ask me like moments where I learned to think from movies. Now this is not a true inherent form analysis but some of the movies like did you see the British working-class okay not comedy it's like it's more tragic but it was popular some ten years ago with the young Ewan McGregor Brassed Off. Now if people ask me about object of desire, double negation, Hegel my god, erotics logics of erotic approach. You have there a wonderful scene I already quoted it once I think where you remember he Ewan McGregor accompanies home a girl who is from more upper class, some kind of accountant but they fall in love, she turns good. Okay the point is that when they are in front of her block where she lives she tells him, would you like to come up for a coffee. He says yeah, but there is one problem I don't like coffee, she says no problem I don't have any. I mean what I like so much is that without any obscenity can you get a more direct come and fuck me but without saying anything, you know? You just first offer a pretext and then take the pretext away and this is what I like. You what in this double gesture the result is not nothing. The logical result would be okay no coffee, no visit no. But and this is for me now I will complicate things. Still I think that Ernst Lubitsch, we Ljubljana school Alenka Zupančič, Mladen Dolar me, made serious self-criticism lately that
you will say but this is just physical illness. Yes but it happens to a woman, not to a man. I know four-five movies where a woman has to choose between career and health or family. She chooses career and she dies. I've never seen not even one film about men having to suffer this predicament. So again I think it's a deeply reactionary film where basically the lesson is woman's place is not the public career, if she does that it's in the long term suicidal. Or then you have of course always the exception, the exception are there Margaret Thatcher figures like but there are women who have balls and so on but that's another story. But so you see how this is what shocks me how even here you find ideology. Or if you permit me another old story it really shocked me. Did you notice something strange in the last James Bond film Quantum of Solace. I'm not talking about politics. Politically it's very progressive I would say. Basically to cut a long story short James Bond saves Evo Morales from some reactionary from some false ecological company who really wants to control water resources and so on. But did you notice something else in the final scene? It's the first James Bond film with no sex. No sex at the end between James Bond and and Bond girl. They just embrace and say okay we are both too traumatized and so on and so on. Now you will say this is one example. Ah, now let's go much lower than James Bond: Dan Brown. Did you notice something strange in one of the great candidates of the worst movie of worst book of all times, The Lost Symbol. There is a couple Robert Langdon and some scientist woman. Look at me, I haven't read it. We will establish what you are reading don't be. But there absolutely not even a sexual tension. Even already in Da Vinci Code, no sex. Angels Demons even more interesting. There is sex in the novel between Robert Langdon and that Vittoria Vetra, the Italian scientist woman who helps him. But now comes a strange thing: there is sex in the novel, there is no sex in the movie. Wait a minute, what we were usually used to is that Hollywood adds sex to make it more commercial. Now we have Hollywood censoring, deleting sex. I don't think this is a progressive move, I think I agree here with Alain Badiou who developed this in his last book, that this is all part of this extremely narcissistic trend when even a passionate sex or love engagement is considered too traumatic, something that opens us too much, that may disturb our narcissistic balance and so on and so on. It's the same reason for which as Badiou noted we are now witnessing a strange rehabilitation of the ancient tradition of pre-arranged marriages. The only difference being that in the old times it was the family counselor whoever relatives who did it, now we have all these dating or marriage agencies and as Badiou noticed it's a wonderful detail of how they call them, sorry of Badiou found an agency in France he found the ad of course he's not looking. Where they say they use French the same: tomber amoureux to fall in love, that we will enable you to be in love without the fall, without falling in love. You see the idea is precisely to avoid that dangerous moment of where you are struck with it, you fall, you lose no, it will be all part of your of your of your homeostatic economy, no risk, no opening involved. So again at this level we should look at ideology at ideology today. This is where media fascinate me but I talk too much let's. And just one thing when you mentioned London School of Economics no? Okay it's easy to make Libya yeah. It's easy yeah. It's easy to make Libyan School of Economics. Yeah there is no. Maybe there is a mistake here in the very way of my argumentation. You know which one? Because there is one thing apropos Libyan crisis which shocked me. Really shocked me. Did you noticed something strange in how not how the media covered it, there it's clear what is happening why the media love the Egyptian crisis, sorry the Libyan crisis because it's a renormalization. With Egypt it was a democratic opening but we really didn't like it blah blah blah. It we were uneasy. With Libya it's back to old waters you know, bad guy of evil, humanitarian crisis, humanitarian intervention rehabilitated. It was a kind of a we return to old well-known coordinates. But what really bothered me and I think this shows the decadence I'm using this term in a fully conscious way, the decadence of the West of the Western so-called radical left. Now correct me if I am wrong but my impression was that the large majority of leftist even left liberal but even more radical leftist critics of Western intervention in Libya, they were almost all obsessed with this question of sincerity. Like is it really for helping the victims there or is it about oil interests political blah blah blah. My god, I was shocked by this. Where did the left arrive at to be even thinking in these terms? They behaved as disappointed lovers, as if they secretly expected a pure humanitarian intervention but then no, no, no, you don't really love me because like. I mean you know who gave me this wonderful idea critical? My good Indian friend Saroj Giri. Who said he was shocked and he told me he wrote then about it a wonderful similar story about Nepal. When the Nepalese Maoists were close to taking power, India planned to give arms to the royal army of course. And all the Indian left played the same game: oh, they are not giving arms just to keep peace, it's a brutal political intervention to blah blah blah, let's not blah blah. And then came a shock: the Nepalese Maoists finally couldn't stand it and exploded and said: stop it. Do you know what you are doing? Are you aware that that more than half of the royal army is already penetrated by our agents? Are you aware that most of the arms given to the army come to us? So please at least think what you are doing, stop with this moralism and ask the elementary question: what will these arms what will be their function? Who will take them and so on and so on. And I think the same thing should be here. Screw sincerity. The question to be asked of one should assume automatically not even debate it that to use the old Stalinist why not term imperialist forces when they intervene they intervene for also for political, economic interests and so on. One should we shouldn't even be debating it. The only question to be asked is whom will these arms deliver there serve and so on and so on. And here I'm much more a radically leftist cynic. I don't know enough about the situation there. But if people I have no sympathy for Gaddafi. But if people who are rebelling Gaddafi are potentially a genuine independent Libyan movement then I say yes, give them arms and maybe the story of Afghanistan will repeat itself and ten years later they will maybe even use these arms against NATO and so on and so on. My god, stop with this moralism ask the real question. I don't care if they are sincere or not but what does it mean politically for power relations there these arms, who will use these arms and so on and so on. And if our judgment is that there is a serious possibility of how should I call it progressive use, then why not? Let's not be moralists here. But especially let's not get caught in these how should I call them in these in these moral in these let's not get caught in these moralistic games. And the last political point very quickly that I'd like to make is a proof that nonetheless we theorists, dreamers and so on are getting dangerous. My god, this made me so satisfied. Namely I thought it's a joke and then I emailed my Chinese friends and they confirmed it to me: it's not a joke. You know that about three weeks ago I think the Chinese government okay, Ministry of Culture whatever formally, it's an official act, prohibited on their movie screens and on TV prohibited all the movies or on TV and theater all the movies or TV stories which deal with time travel and alternate history. With the justification was that such stories I quote: introduce frivolity into serious historical matters. But isn't this a wonderful example of how those in power are afraid even of a story about alternate reality like that, it may give wrong idea to people and so on and so on no. I think this is our reality more and more. Although of course we do have alternate reality stories, but we do it just more efficiently. The problem is how to how to how to how should I put it how to limit, how to constrain political imagination. Now I've talked too much let's Gemma do we have time for one more? Yeah. Well I'll double up on the question because it would be good to get some questions from the audience but is there I've confessed that I really love Spartacus: Gods of the Arena. This not the old movie which is too moral. No, no the new HBO Kirk Douglas movie it's kind of Hollywood progressive moralism horrible. It's so tasteless it's unbelievable. But the other thing I'd recommend to the audience is It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, if you ever see that it's a US import. Danny DeVito in the latter stages of his career just giving up all notions. My tastes are lower, I advise you Fast Five this is. So is there any TV series like those which have unexpectedly made you think? Okay, now it's an old story that I will repeat and it will be a shock to you. I changed my mind I'm ready to rehabilitate it. I think the last two installments seven and eight are the best of radically progressive Hollywood. Now you think I'm crazy. Did you see the last two? Not only are there at the level of content almost naive in a even too naive Marxist way progressive. Like you know for example one before the last I think it's seven or six seven yes. You know at the beginning it looks like Muslim terrorism then you learn it's all staged by an American defense company which wants to push Pentagon into an exclusive deal. So it's this elementary leftist twist from external threat to an internal enemy. Point two: it's even too sentimental but nonetheless a nice too political correct maybe moment when when Jack Bauer thinks that he is dying of some radiation he calls a Muslim priest whom he even mistreated before claiming he is the only the only friend I have. But what I found okay this is the usual left Hollywood left, this is not enough. But what I liked is the final predicament that you get. How the series at the end presents us with two-three positions which are all portrayed as desperate. Jack Bauer does not end as this kind of a the right-wingers like it, this kind of a I sacrifice myself by doing behind the scenes the brutal cruel stuff torturing and so on because somebody the true hero has to do the job. No, at the end he is totally broken. He says I cannot live with what I am doing, it should he says it should all get into public. This is unbearable I will never find my peace. So there is no justification in this way then his counterpart, the ethical figure of the president, the woman Alison Taylor also gets caught in a similar game and steps down at the end. So at the end you have a total deadlock. No uplifting message. He is obliterated, totally broken, she the liberal face admits her inconsistency. Sorry, but this at least is what honest analysis shows us. No cheap way out. Neither the right-wing justification you know, this kind of a simple the most disgusting version, no heroism of somebody has to do the dirty job blah blah nor this easy liberal Pelican Brief or whatever you know, the good liberals tell the torturers, ah no, we can do it in a human way otherwise we will become like them and so on or whatever. No, it just ends in a total ethical deadlock. I'm sorry to tell you but this is quite something I think, much more. I I haven't finished the boxset yet so thanks for that. I haven't finished the boxset. Sorry? I haven't finished the boxset. Are you stupid? I didn't watch it, I just report on I read about it, who has time to watch this stuff? The last thing you know what you should think about? How another if you ask me like moments where I learned to think from movies. Now this is not a true inherent form analysis but some of the movies like did you see the British working-class okay not comedy it's like it's more tragic but it was popular some ten years ago with the young Ewan McGregor Brassed Off. Now if people ask me about object of desire, double negation, Hegel my god, erotics logics of erotic approach. You have there a wonderful scene I already quoted it once I think where you remember he Ewan McGregor accompanies home a girl who is from more upper class, some kind of accountant but they fall in love, she turns good. Okay the point is that when they are in front of her block where she lives she tells him, would you like to come up for a coffee. He says yeah, but there is one problem I don't like coffee, she says no problem I don't have any. I mean what I like so much is that without any obscenity can you get a more direct come and fuck me but without saying anything, you know? You just first offer a pretext and then take the pretext away and this is what I like. You what in this double gesture the result is not nothing. The logical result would be okay no coffee, no visit no. But and this is for me now I will complicate things. Still I think that Ernst Lubitsch, we Ljubljana school Alenka Zupančič, Mladen Dolar me, made serious self-criticism lately that
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maybe we played too much Hitchcock there are others like Ernst Lubitsch. In
maybe we played too much Hitchcock there are others like Ernst Lubitsch. In
Slavoj Žižek
Ninotchka, which is not my favorite Lubitsch, the
Ninotchka, which is not my favorite Lubitsch, the
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favorite is of course To Be or Not to Be. In Ninotchka there is nonetheless please listen to it it's an incredible line of dialogue Alenka Zupančič found it and brought it to my attention. She now wrote a whole
favorite is of course To Be or Not to Be. In Ninotchka there is nonetheless please listen to it it's an incredible line of dialogue Alenka Zupančič found it and brought it to my attention. She now wrote a whole
Slavoj Žižek
text on it. The hero visits in Ninotchka a cafeteria and orders coffee without cream. He has he says coffee without cream please. Listen what the waiter answers. Sorry but we have run out of cream but we
text on it. The hero visits in Ninotchka a cafeteria and orders coffee without cream. He has he says coffee without cream please. Listen what the waiter answers. Sorry but we have run out of cream but we
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still have milk. Can I then bring you coffee without milk? This is what Hegelian dialectics is called. And now you will say this is simple differentiality no like because like now you will say what's the point because in any case he wants plain coffee. But no, the waiter is right to offer him because he doesn't want just plain coffee, he wants coffee without something. This negativity you
still have milk. Can I then bring you coffee without milk? This is what Hegelian dialectics is called. And now you will say this is simple differentiality no like because like now you will say what's the point because in any case he wants plain coffee. But no, the waiter is right to offer him because he doesn't want just plain coffee, he wants coffee without something. This negativity you
Slavoj Žižek
know it's like my favorite not don't be afraid I will not repeat myself for hundredth time if I say Montenegro joke it will not be that how do Montenegro guys masturbate no. I have a better one. How why does a Montenegro guy in ex-Yugoslavia they were famous for being lazy. Why does a Montenegro guy always put at his night table a full and an empty glass of water? Because he is too lazy to think in advance will he be thirsty or not during the night. You see the same genius. Now with your stupid British common sense you would have said okay just put a glass and you drink it or not. No, Montenegro guy is a dialectical negative. He knows that the absence itself has to be represented, marked by an empty glass. Now you will say why this is not the same? Here I have a theory precisely because why is coffee without cream not the same as coffee without milk? It would have been the same if it would simply have meant coffee. No, the question to ask is why do we why do we add something to coffee? And here we have of course the entire topic of Object a. Coffee needs something to become really coffee. Now you will say but sometimes you also get pure plain coffee. Yes but then I will not bore you now with the analysis then coffee itself functions as it were at its own supplement. What I'm saying is that in order for this logic of coffee with without to function you must already have the structure of Object a, the thing which is not in itself fully the thing which needs a supplement and so on and so on. In other words to conclude nonetheless what makes this situation more complex is that another example of the same logic is the example where what I'm trying to show you is an example where you negate something and then you negate the negation but you don't get positivity back. Like not you have you have coffee with milk but then you have what the customer wanted is coffee with coffee with without cream and the waiter offered him coffee with without milk. So the way to detect this is where opposites function in the same way, this paradoxical structure like sorry to repeat an old story but I report I use it I think in my first British book already. About a Hearst journalist who was terribly afraid to to take a holiday and Hearst asks him why why don't you go you deserve it. He said but I
know it's like my favorite not don't be afraid I will not repeat myself for hundredth time if I say Montenegro joke it will not be that how do Montenegro guys masturbate no. I have a better one. How why does a Montenegro guy in ex-Yugoslavia they were famous for being lazy. Why does a Montenegro guy always put at his night table a full and an empty glass of water? Because he is too lazy to think in advance will he be thirsty or not during the night. You see the same genius. Now with your stupid British common sense you would have said okay just put a glass and you drink it or not. No, Montenegro guy is a dialectical negative. He knows that the absence itself has to be represented, marked by an empty glass. Now you will say why this is not the same? Here I have a theory precisely because why is coffee without cream not the same as coffee without milk? It would have been the same if it would simply have meant coffee. No, the question to ask is why do we why do we add something to coffee? And here we have of course the entire topic of Object a. Coffee needs something to become really coffee. Now you will say but sometimes you also get pure plain coffee. Yes but then I will not bore you now with the analysis then coffee itself functions as it were at its own supplement. What I'm saying is that in order for this logic of coffee with without to function you must already have the structure of Object a, the thing which is not in itself fully the thing which needs a supplement and so on and so on. In other words to conclude nonetheless what makes this situation more complex is that another example of the same logic is the example where what I'm trying to show you is an example where you negate something and then you negate the negation but you don't get positivity back. Like not you have you have coffee with milk but then you have what the customer wanted is coffee with coffee with without cream and the waiter offered him coffee with without milk. So the way to detect this is where opposites function in the same way, this paradoxical structure like sorry to repeat an old story but I report I use it I think in my first British book already. About a Hearst journalist who was terribly afraid to to take a holiday and Hearst asks him why why don't you go you deserve it. He said but I
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was working here
was working here
Slavoj Žižek
for days I was years I was never missing. He said and I'm afraid if I leave like everything will fall apart that's why I don't want to take a holiday. And then of course Hearst said listen don't worry it's perfectly structured nobody will even notice your absence if you go for a holiday. And then of course the guy says that's what I'm even more afraid of no, blah blah blah. You see this this logic of like you give a reason A, this reason is negated it's even more and so on. This for example again simple jokes like this bring you to the very core of the most difficult Hegelian topics of in what sense identity is always identity as a contradiction. Like let's make a jump from here to ideology. Just think about when do we use tautology? How literally Hegel is true here. Don't we use tautology precisely in order as two extremes either to make a cynical realistic point or to elevate into sublime the object. Like when you say for example you my love you are really you. This means oh my god you are the sublime thing. But if you say law is law. When do you say law is law? Precisely when law is obviously corrupt, doesn't function and so on. Then you say but still we have to obey it because law is law and so on. So again all I what I like is just these sudden moments of enlightenment from here and there that you find in intelligent so-called popular culture and I totally agree with you here. I mean what I really hate is movies which pretend to be more than popular culture but are just a worst low class not in the class sense but in the sense of artistic consistency attempt to fill up this for example if you ask me a Goebbels question which movies you would be ready to burn in public? Immediately what comes to my mind are two Bertolucci films, Sheltering Sky and Last Tango in Paris. I think they all play this game like if you just show sex intensely then it's soft core pornography, but if you just put between the sex scenes a boring nothing like you know people look for five minutes at each other and so on, then all of a sudden it becomes high art and so on and so on. I don't buy that. I think that the true challenge today is to go as deep as possible into all these formulas: sex comedy, spy, whatever, terror and so on and try to discover, to bring out another another dimension there. But Slavoj, could I defend Last Tango in Paris for what it did for the British butter industry? Yeah, but I have an an answer to this one which would have been something like do you want come with me with to have some butter? Then I say no, I don't have any butter and then you say no, I have cream with me and we don't need butter and so on, you like. Okay in this sense maybe yes, in this sense maybe although although like I don't like the idea of butter, you know, but that's another that's another question. I think we've found out that Slavoj is a Flora man, right. Is a? Flora man, it's a type of margarine. Ah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I go no- no, no okay. Now you know I'm an idiot in a literal sense. You know what is an idiot? Idiot, you know there are okay just to finish. Recently I'm just finishing a book on Hegel and I even wanted maybe the subtitle Hegel for imbeciles. You know what this means? I learned in Wikipedia as all of us today that there are three levels of stupidity. You have idiots, imbeciles and morons. Idiots are to morons no sorry idiots are below IQ, morons are sorry imbeciles are like your your IQ is your bodily temperature like in Celsius no and and morons are to no. I think that idiots are people who simply don't get the properly symbolic dimension. Like this is always my tendency, like you know you asked me of course as a joke ironically and I simply started to think butter, lotions, margarine, how do they drive? You know something in me pushes me into taking things absolutely literally no. It's not that I'm so stupid that I don't get the joke but I say fuck the joke, that's the real problem, yeah no. Then morons are those who simply rely on the big other. Morons are the opposite. For example another great idiot in a good sense was Wittgenstein. He always had this absolute naïveté. Morons are people who fully identify with symbolic order but imbeciles are the most interesting. First you know if you say with usual negations like not something, you know what is that something? Ha ha do you know what a what is negated with imbecile? Like what "becile" is. It's very mysterious. There is a theory that imbecile means means in ancient or in Roman a stick that you need to walk with. So imbecile is the one without a stick to walk. And in so far as this stick that you need while walking or here talking, thinking is the big other. So it's a very nice position Lacanian: you know there is no big other imbecile no stick but you still know that you must somehow relate to it. So what I would say is that this mid-position no, avoiding the pure idiocy this literal, taking it literal a great a great imbecile in the best sense for example is for me Kafka no, what he does with Jewish tradition. He is not a moron, he doesn't simply rely on it. But he is also not an idiot but it's this weird weird treating it at a distance. This is maybe what we did now, more more imbeciles. Okay. That's a good note to end on. The only thing I was going to say is that we in the I wouldn't want to have a question and answer session in the absence of questions although you do seem to be good at answers without questions. Is as we don't have a great deal of time it'd be really nice to involve the cinema audience. So we'll just have one question from those in the cinema. So if everyone in the cinema can see me um just stick your hand up and the usher will come to the first person they can and we'll listen to your question from in here. Thank you. Ah so there will be questions? There will be one. Ah because I was I thought of talking too much so that then I can say hypocritically I'm so sad that we don't have time for questions but. You almost did it. Almost did it. Hi Žižek can you hear me? Are you here or? No, I'm in the cinema. Ah. And um I guess I'll I'll speak on behalf of everyone here in the cinema and I'm thinking about something you wrote about in a book that was published before the YouTube video that we saw. And it was in your book called Plague of Fantasies. Yeah. And you spoke about um bloopers and um how at the end of DVDs they had um the kind of the making of. The making of films. The bloopers. What? Bloopers, the errors they make on a DVD they show at the end of DVD. The things that go wrong. Ah yeah yeah, sorry. Yeah yeah yeah. So you spoke about
for days I was years I was never missing. He said and I'm afraid if I leave like everything will fall apart that's why I don't want to take a holiday. And then of course Hearst said listen don't worry it's perfectly structured nobody will even notice your absence if you go for a holiday. And then of course the guy says that's what I'm even more afraid of no, blah blah blah. You see this this logic of like you give a reason A, this reason is negated it's even more and so on. This for example again simple jokes like this bring you to the very core of the most difficult Hegelian topics of in what sense identity is always identity as a contradiction. Like let's make a jump from here to ideology. Just think about when do we use tautology? How literally Hegel is true here. Don't we use tautology precisely in order as two extremes either to make a cynical realistic point or to elevate into sublime the object. Like when you say for example you my love you are really you. This means oh my god you are the sublime thing. But if you say law is law. When do you say law is law? Precisely when law is obviously corrupt, doesn't function and so on. Then you say but still we have to obey it because law is law and so on. So again all I what I like is just these sudden moments of enlightenment from here and there that you find in intelligent so-called popular culture and I totally agree with you here. I mean what I really hate is movies which pretend to be more than popular culture but are just a worst low class not in the class sense but in the sense of artistic consistency attempt to fill up this for example if you ask me a Goebbels question which movies you would be ready to burn in public? Immediately what comes to my mind are two Bertolucci films, Sheltering Sky and Last Tango in Paris. I think they all play this game like if you just show sex intensely then it's soft core pornography, but if you just put between the sex scenes a boring nothing like you know people look for five minutes at each other and so on, then all of a sudden it becomes high art and so on and so on. I don't buy that. I think that the true challenge today is to go as deep as possible into all these formulas: sex comedy, spy, whatever, terror and so on and try to discover, to bring out another another dimension there. But Slavoj, could I defend Last Tango in Paris for what it did for the British butter industry? Yeah, but I have an an answer to this one which would have been something like do you want come with me with to have some butter? Then I say no, I don't have any butter and then you say no, I have cream with me and we don't need butter and so on, you like. Okay in this sense maybe yes, in this sense maybe although although like I don't like the idea of butter, you know, but that's another that's another question. I think we've found out that Slavoj is a Flora man, right. Is a? Flora man, it's a type of margarine. Ah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I go no- no, no okay. Now you know I'm an idiot in a literal sense. You know what is an idiot? Idiot, you know there are okay just to finish. Recently I'm just finishing a book on Hegel and I even wanted maybe the subtitle Hegel for imbeciles. You know what this means? I learned in Wikipedia as all of us today that there are three levels of stupidity. You have idiots, imbeciles and morons. Idiots are to morons no sorry idiots are below IQ, morons are sorry imbeciles are like your your IQ is your bodily temperature like in Celsius no and and morons are to no. I think that idiots are people who simply don't get the properly symbolic dimension. Like this is always my tendency, like you know you asked me of course as a joke ironically and I simply started to think butter, lotions, margarine, how do they drive? You know something in me pushes me into taking things absolutely literally no. It's not that I'm so stupid that I don't get the joke but I say fuck the joke, that's the real problem, yeah no. Then morons are those who simply rely on the big other. Morons are the opposite. For example another great idiot in a good sense was Wittgenstein. He always had this absolute naïveté. Morons are people who fully identify with symbolic order but imbeciles are the most interesting. First you know if you say with usual negations like not something, you know what is that something? Ha ha do you know what a what is negated with imbecile? Like what "becile" is. It's very mysterious. There is a theory that imbecile means means in ancient or in Roman a stick that you need to walk with. So imbecile is the one without a stick to walk. And in so far as this stick that you need while walking or here talking, thinking is the big other. So it's a very nice position Lacanian: you know there is no big other imbecile no stick but you still know that you must somehow relate to it. So what I would say is that this mid-position no, avoiding the pure idiocy this literal, taking it literal a great a great imbecile in the best sense for example is for me Kafka no, what he does with Jewish tradition. He is not a moron, he doesn't simply rely on it. But he is also not an idiot but it's this weird weird treating it at a distance. This is maybe what we did now, more more imbeciles. Okay. That's a good note to end on. The only thing I was going to say is that we in the I wouldn't want to have a question and answer session in the absence of questions although you do seem to be good at answers without questions. Is as we don't have a great deal of time it'd be really nice to involve the cinema audience. So we'll just have one question from those in the cinema. So if everyone in the cinema can see me um just stick your hand up and the usher will come to the first person they can and we'll listen to your question from in here. Thank you. Ah so there will be questions? There will be one. Ah because I was I thought of talking too much so that then I can say hypocritically I'm so sad that we don't have time for questions but. You almost did it. Almost did it. Hi Žižek can you hear me? Are you here or? No, I'm in the cinema. Ah. And um I guess I'll I'll speak on behalf of everyone here in the cinema and I'm thinking about something you wrote about in a book that was published before the YouTube video that we saw. And it was in your book called Plague of Fantasies. Yeah. And you spoke about um bloopers and um how at the end of DVDs they had um the kind of the making of. The making of films. The bloopers. What? Bloopers, the errors they make on a DVD they show at the end of DVD. The things that go wrong. Ah yeah yeah, sorry. Yeah yeah yeah. So you spoke about
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that and you spoke about how um it was a kind of chance to see the actors being maybe more real than
that and you spoke about how um it was a kind of chance to see the actors being maybe more real than
Slavoj Žižek
real but in actual effect it was it was as much a fantasy as the film itself. And I suppose watching you here tonight we're very close to you um and it's a view that we would only see if we were here tonight but we we actually can't see you. You're still on the screen
real but in actual effect it was it was as much a fantasy as the film itself. And I suppose watching you here tonight we're very close to you um and it's a view that we would only see if we were here tonight but we we actually can't see you. You're still on the screen
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for us. So you're as much a fantasy
for us. So you're as much a fantasy
Slavoj Žižek
as um as maybe the film. So I suppose my question is um how how do you feel about your popularity because I think you know despite the comments on Alain de Botton and and Sky News you obviously have a huge following and and um I am a big fan of yours as I assume everyone here is in the room. Um so you have a lot of people who say things against you but you also have a huge following and I was wondering how you deal with that and how you as a as a philosopher, as a thinker, how you how you continue with this kind of ever-growing popularity and and a very big following? Oh maybe it's I'm very sincerely grateful for this question. I'm almost not used in these days to this kind of kind questions. First to the when you mention those mistakes or whatever no. Here if I I am not boasting just I am mentioning Ralph Fiennes for the simple reason to have somebody who really told me this. He told me that what really annoys him. This is a nice example probably Adorno would have liked it of this total manipulation. You know he told me that now when you shoot a movie it's all already planned. They say now we will shoot some deleted scenes and now we will shoot some this bloopers mistakes and so on and so on. They already take into account what you have to do on the DVD version no. You must have deleted scenes and all that stuff and they literally plan them in advance. And I kind of as I like this idea to cut a long story short no. Now as to this popularity stuff I can guarantee that I am doing really doing all possible to ruin it, like no no no no no. No no no no no no dirty jokes but I just am finishing like putting together blah blah blah. There is still a lot of work because I am aware there are many repetitions, confusions in my so I this one I want really to be a real book consistent line. It will be printed pages I would say at least on Hegel. It's on Hegel. And there are some jokes but maybe
as um as maybe the film. So I suppose my question is um how how do you feel about your popularity because I think you know despite the comments on Alain de Botton and and Sky News you obviously have a huge following and and um I am a big fan of yours as I assume everyone here is in the room. Um so you have a lot of people who say things against you but you also have a huge following and I was wondering how you deal with that and how you as a as a philosopher, as a thinker, how you how you continue with this kind of ever-growing popularity and and a very big following? Oh maybe it's I'm very sincerely grateful for this question. I'm almost not used in these days to this kind of kind questions. First to the when you mention those mistakes or whatever no. Here if I I am not boasting just I am mentioning Ralph Fiennes for the simple reason to have somebody who really told me this. He told me that what really annoys him. This is a nice example probably Adorno would have liked it of this total manipulation. You know he told me that now when you shoot a movie it's all already planned. They say now we will shoot some deleted scenes and now we will shoot some this bloopers mistakes and so on and so on. They already take into account what you have to do on the DVD version no. You must have deleted scenes and all that stuff and they literally plan them in advance. And I kind of as I like this idea to cut a long story short no. Now as to this popularity stuff I can guarantee that I am doing really doing all possible to ruin it, like no no no no no. No no no no no no dirty jokes but I just am finishing like putting together blah blah blah. There is still a lot of work because I am aware there are many repetitions, confusions in my so I this one I want really to be a real book consistent line. It will be printed pages I would say at least on Hegel. It's on Hegel. And there are some jokes but maybe
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three-four jokes not too much. It's extremely boring. The first hundred pages is close Hegelian reading of Plato Parmenides then it's pages on Fichte and so on and so on. So let's see what happens. Oh you'll get the most boring philosopher in the West. Yeah yeah
three-four jokes not too much. It's extremely boring. The first hundred pages is close Hegelian reading of Plato Parmenides then it's pages on Fichte and so on and so on. So let's see what happens. Oh you'll get the most boring philosopher in the West. Yeah yeah
Slavoj Žižek
yeah
yeah
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with
with
Slavoj Žižek
with that one. But again you know here the reason apart from maybe personal pathologies that I played this game of making a clown of myself is that nonetheless
with that one. But again you know here the reason apart from maybe personal pathologies that I played this game of making a clown of myself is that nonetheless
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I think the situation is not totally hopeless. In the sense of you know people may say oh oh a clown but I noticed a couple of times how a line of reasoning which people would not have been ready to accept directly if you can as it were if you can present it as a in a jokish ridiculous way then it somehow lowers their ideological attention. They
I think the situation is not totally hopeless. In the sense of you know people may say oh oh a clown but I noticed a couple of times how a line of reasoning which people would not have been ready to accept directly if you can as it were if you can present it as a in a jokish ridiculous way then it somehow lowers their ideological attention. They
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open up and hop you catch them. Maybe they even don't know but they do
open up and hop you catch them. Maybe they even don't know but they do
Slavoj Žižek
take it seriously. Because
take it seriously. Because
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you know a true goal of my work is not so much for you to accept certain statement thesis and so on but to accept a certain critical analytic view and so on and so on. So I think nonetheless that basically maybe I didn't make a mistake here. I still think that in every serious theory because Deleuze already said this very wonderfully how when you think it's painful you think against the spontaneity of your mind. Thinking is like a mental rape if you want, it's something that forces itself upon you. So you need to start with an obscenity and of course you don't end with an obscenity. Okay to finish I already told it you before with my final obscene joke but you will see why I like it because precisely it's not you see at the end that the point is totally non-obscene. You know recently a friend told me this joke. It
you know a true goal of my work is not so much for you to accept certain statement thesis and so on but to accept a certain critical analytic view and so on and so on. So I think nonetheless that basically maybe I didn't make a mistake here. I still think that in every serious theory because Deleuze already said this very wonderfully how when you think it's painful you think against the spontaneity of your mind. Thinking is like a mental rape if you want, it's something that forces itself upon you. So you need to start with an obscenity and of course you don't end with an obscenity. Okay to finish I already told it you before with my final obscene joke but you will see why I like it because precisely it's not you see at the end that the point is totally non-obscene. You know recently a friend told me this joke. It
Slavoj Žižek
takes place in Russia in Stalinist times. It's wonderful because it's a Stalinist joke but it has nothing to do with politics, dissidents and so on. It's start like two men are on a train compartment and the train goes on they sit there silently for one-two hours then one guy asks the other did you already fuck a dog? The other guy says no this is disgusting did you? The first guy says of course not I agree with you it's disgusting. Then the second asks him but then why did you ask me? The first says oh I was just looking for a good line to break the ice to start a conversation you know. Like maybe you should take my jokes like this a little bit no. That you know the point is not them. The point is to break the ice and then we talk about things. And I claim all thinking needs this. This is for me at least what is wrong with this de Botton and other style of popular philosophy or to put it in another way. You know that today we what is the ideological message that we are getting. It's all from Dalai Lama to all these be authentic manuals. These are versions of be yourself. Realize your potentials, be truly yourself and so on. Here I am faithful to, now I will be more politically correct, Judeo-Christian-Muslim legacy
takes place in Russia in Stalinist times. It's wonderful because it's a Stalinist joke but it has nothing to do with politics, dissidents and so on. It's start like two men are on a train compartment and the train goes on they sit there silently for one-two hours then one guy asks the other did you already fuck a dog? The other guy says no this is disgusting did you? The first guy says of course not I agree with you it's disgusting. Then the second asks him but then why did you ask me? The first says oh I was just looking for a good line to break the ice to start a conversation you know. Like maybe you should take my jokes like this a little bit no. That you know the point is not them. The point is to break the ice and then we talk about things. And I claim all thinking needs this. This is for me at least what is wrong with this de Botton and other style of popular philosophy or to put it in another way. You know that today we what is the ideological message that we are getting. It's all from Dalai Lama to all these be authentic manuals. These are versions of be yourself. Realize your potentials, be truly yourself and so on. Here I am faithful to, now I will be more politically correct, Judeo-Christian-Muslim legacy
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of religions of
of religions of
Slavoj Žižek
the book where I think there is something which they have all together. That precisely again truth is not deep inside you, it's not be yourself. Truth is like love. You know I was recently in the in Bilbao and they told me that in their Basque language it's even better than to fall in love. Their expression it's an everyday expression to if you literally translate it to fall in love is to be injured by love. And I think it's the same about truth: you are by definition always injured by truth. So again I think that my ethics is totally opposite. It's not get rid of external obstacles just go deeply into yourself. No if I go deeply in myself I find shit how should I put it it's nothing nothing interesting. Here I am not in Nietzsche's sense but for an overman the true ethical call is no, fight against yourselves go over you. Truth hurts, truth is a painful encounter. Which is why either dirty jokes or whatever things are needed as the first step to to shatter you somehow. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for breaking the ice at the ICA Slavoj. We are always so happy, very welcoming of you at the ICA. And Paul Taylor thanks for the fascinating focus of today's discussion. But you know what I would like to do at ICA? Yeah what? I noticed that in your cinema program no, you have all this politically correct bullshit you know like Iranian cinema, South Korean cinema. Why don't you allow me to do a program of like you know real films for
the book where I think there is something which they have all together. That precisely again truth is not deep inside you, it's not be yourself. Truth is like love. You know I was recently in the in Bilbao and they told me that in their Basque language it's even better than to fall in love. Their expression it's an everyday expression to if you literally translate it to fall in love is to be injured by love. And I think it's the same about truth: you are by definition always injured by truth. So again I think that my ethics is totally opposite. It's not get rid of external obstacles just go deeply into yourself. No if I go deeply in myself I find shit how should I put it it's nothing nothing interesting. Here I am not in Nietzsche's sense but for an overman the true ethical call is no, fight against yourselves go over you. Truth hurts, truth is a painful encounter. Which is why either dirty jokes or whatever things are needed as the first step to to shatter you somehow. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for breaking the ice at the ICA Slavoj. We are always so happy, very welcoming of you at the ICA. And Paul Taylor thanks for the fascinating focus of today's discussion. But you know what I would like to do at ICA? Yeah what? I noticed that in your cinema program no, you have all this politically correct bullshit you know like Iranian cinema, South Korean cinema. Why don't you allow me to do a program of like you know real films for
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real people you
real people you
Slavoj Žižek
know like action movies and so on no like you know no. Not this intellectual stuff you know.
know like action movies and so on no like you know no. Not this intellectual stuff you know.
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I don't think that's entirely unlikely. Um both Slavoj Žižek and Paul Taylor have books in the bookshop and will be signing shortly. There's a talk here on the 26th of May: New Media Post Media with people like Boris Groys so if you're interested in that kind of thing do book your tickets now. And just once again thank you to both.
I don't think that's entirely unlikely. Um both Slavoj Žižek and Paul Taylor have books in the bookshop and will be signing shortly. There's a talk here on the 26th of May: New Media Post Media with people like Boris Groys so if you're interested in that kind of thing do book your tickets now. And just once again thank you to both.
Slavoj Žižek
I warn you Boris Groys you think I am crazy Boris Groys is more crazy than me. I won't deny it. Yeah yeah.
I warn you Boris Groys you think I am crazy Boris Groys is more crazy than me. I won't deny it. Yeah yeah.
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Thank you to both Slavoj Žižek and Paul Taylor and thank you for coming. But
Thank you to both Slavoj Žižek and Paul Taylor and thank you for coming. But
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I am really grateful
I am really grateful
Slavoj Žižek
for your book. What can I do more? Come Slavoj.
for your book. What can I do more? Come Slavoj.