Slavoj Zizek - A global world of local traditions
Lecture · John Hillman ·
2025-04 · 2:17:22 · 16,367 words
capitalismcommunism-socialismideologypsychoanalysishegel-dialecticsecology-climatesexuality-genderrace-antisemitismfascism-populismliberalism-political-correctnessrevolution-violencetechnology-ai-cyberspacecinema-art-culturescience-physicshistorygeopolitics-wareconomicssubjectivityeveryday-lifephilosophy-general
In a seminar discussion held near SOAS London, Žižek defends his self-description as a 'moderately conservative communist,' arguing that only global coordination can address ecology and AI crises, and that what matters after any revolutionary moment is 'the day after', the concrete improvement of ordinary lives. He analyzes Trumpism as a genuinely revolutionary transformation of capitalism rather than simple fascism, and the gig/precarious economy as the ideal ideological mystification of class antagonism. The talk also covers feminism as a struggle against informal everyday subordination beyond formal equality, the paradox that Stalinist repression intensified under economic liberalization (NEP) rather than war communism, and concludes with reflections on happiness as a necessary byproduct of vocation rather than a plannable goal.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 18
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Žižek's self-description: communist in insisting on global coordination as the only solution to ecology/AI/inequality, conservative in attending to what actually improves ordinary people's lives day-to-day rather than chasing ecstatic mass-protest moments.
as “the day after”
What actually matters after revolutionary or protest moments: not the ecstatic unity of crowds but whether ordinary people's lives concretely improved two or three months later.
as “war communist”
Žižek's preferred mode of communism: action-oriented, emergency-mode collective coordination, opposed to utopian or purely symbolic communism.
Marxist concept: a new economic class spontaneously generates an ideology corresponding to its interests; Žižek uses it to explain why Lenin feared the NEP's new middle class would organically develop anti-communist consciousness.
as “coffee without cream”
Žižek's Hegelian formula derived from the Ninotchka joke: a thing's identity includes what it is deprived of, so coffee without cream is not the same as plain coffee, negation is inscribed in the thing's symbolic identity.
Quantum concept Žižek deploys as Hegelian: to determine what a thing is, place it in the context of the possibilities that existed alongside it but did not happen; negation is constitutive of actuality.
Hegelian logic whereby whichever contingent possibility wins will retroactively rewrite the entire past as having necessarily led to it; continuity is always retroactive, never pre-given.
as “soft fascism or neo-feudalism”
Žižek's term for the direction history moves on its own, left without voluntary intervention; not classical fascism but a new, possibly softer form of authoritarian hierarchy.
Jameson's concept, endorsed by Žižek: attempts by non-Western societies to pursue a different path to modernity outside liberal capitalism; Žižek argues these ultimately reproduce capitalist antagonisms and that Europe already tried alternate modernity, it was called fascism.
as “precarious work as ideal form”
Žižek's claim that gig/precarious labor is not a defect but the ideal ideological form of new capitalism: it mystifies exploitation by presenting workers as small capitalists who own their means of production, and turns class companions into competitors.
as “primordial father”
Freud's pre-symbolic figure (from Totem and Taboo) who holds all enjoyment and has not yet been killed by the sons; Žižek applies it to Trump and Musk as obscene authority figures that emerge when symbolic paternal authority is in crisis.
as “symbolic father”
Lacanian term for the rule of law as paternal authority; its crisis produces the return of the obscene primordial father figure exemplified by Trump/Musk.
Term from an interlocutor, endorsed by Žižek: re-functioning digital platforms (Uber, Amazon) as cooperatives or publicly regulated entities rather than privately extracted surplus-value machines.
Hegelian concept illustrated via Hanif Kureishi: a particular image (the failed Pakistani diplomat father who wanted to be a writer) can stand in for a universal human condition.
as “envy as natural pathology”
Žižek's claim that the fundamental human drive is not wanting what the other has but preferring the other not have it even at one's own cost; if anything is a natural pathology of human nature, it is envy in this specific sense.
Protestant concept deployed materialistically by Žižek: relative happiness requires finding a calling, something more than pleasure, something that defines who you are, whether helping others, creating, or passionate love.
Jon Elster's concept: crucial human states (dignity, happiness) cannot be achieved by direct planning and instead emerge only as unintended side-effects of acting toward other ends.
as “worldlessness”
Badiou's concept, endorsed by Žižek: capitalism lacks a coherent world-view or horizon of meaning, producing a condition of disconnected local worlds without a unifying symbolic framework.
Stories he reaches for 4
A customer orders coffee without cream; the waiter says there is no cream, only milk, so he can only offer coffee without milk. The joke illustrates that negation is not nothing, coffee without cream is different from coffee without milk even if materially the same cup.
“coffee without cream please and the waiter answers sorry we have no cream only milk so I can only give you coffee without milk”
The Moralesista government raised living standards for ordinary Bolivians while maintaining a careful balance of taxation and compromise that avoided total boycott by the rich, a model of moderate communist governance. The model unraveled over lithium resource politics, splitting Morales from Lucho Arce.
“they did a wonder in Bolivia they really really without any illusions raised the standard of the ordinary people as much as possible”
Kureishi, severely disabled and cared for by NHS workers, discovered that many low-paid care workers refused to change jobs despite bad conditions, saying 'people depend on me.' Žižek uses this to show humans are better than the egotist liberal image: obligation and care persist despite economic incentive to leave.
“he asked them but why don't you change your job and he got from many of them this simple reaction but people depend on me I cannot let them”
A fan asked Žižek to write an obscene dedication; Žižek warned him twice he takes things literally, then wrote genuinely extreme obscenities. The fan was hurt. The point: everyday extreme language (insults, obscenities) functions by not being meant literally, the idiot is whoever takes it literally.
“I warned him I told him you are playing with the devil I'm an idiot I take things literally if you mean obscene you will get it obscene”
Works invoked 15
Ninotchka film
Source of the 'eternal joke', coffee without cream, deployed to illustrate Hegelian constitutive negation; described as 'eternal' and beloved.
Antigone play
Sophocles; cited via Jameson's reading that Antigone stages the constitution of the polis, not its decay, the gap between family and state law is what first defines the state; Medea contrasted to Antigone as the 'true woman' not reducible to motherhood.
Anti-Oedipus book
By Deleuze and Guattari; described as 'my big hatred'; contrasted unfavorably with A Thousand Plateaus.
By Gillian Rose; cited as one of the great women-authored books on Hegel.
A Thousand Plateaus book
By Deleuze and Guattari; cited in context of worldlessness and localized non-totalizing meaning; Žižek prefers it strongly over Anti-Oedipus.
Totem and Taboo book
By Freud; cited for the primordial father concept used to analyze Trump and Musk as obscene authority figures that emerge when symbolic paternal authority collapses.
Alien film
Described as 'the best movie about what birth means', cited for the horror of childbirth as illustration of the Medea/motherhood theme.
Store of the Worlds other
Short story (author forgotten) also adapted into a 15-minute British film; cited as the best illustration of happiness as byproduct, the man's true happiness was the calm awaiting of his imagined happiness, not any planned goal.
Babygirl film
Nicole Kidman film Žižek didn't like overall; praises one scene where the CEO heroine responds to a superior's offer of domination by asserting she will organize and pay for humiliation herself, used to illustrate autonomous desire and depersonalization.
The Burnout Society book
By Byung-Chul Han; mentioned by an audience member as context for Han's broader project; Žižek engages with Han's ideas without directly commenting on this title.
By Svetlana Boym; cited by an audience member discussing Qin's unification of units and its echo in the American dream; Žižek acknowledges knowing Boym.
Cited as example of the myth of women's 'false freedom' in British working-class mythology, wife controls the household purse while husband earns; used to illustrate how apparent female privilege can be incorporated into subordination.
Rumors book
By Mladen Dolar; book on authority; Žižek recommends it to the audience; its starting point, authority has always been perceived as already in crisis, is cited approvingly.
By Byung-Chul Han; mentioned by audience for its argument about circular, relational, non-essentialist perspective in Eastern culture contrasted with Western copyright/identity; Žižek engages with the idea without fully endorsing Han.
White Lotus tv
Says he hates it but will watch the next Monday finale to find out who the killer is; a rare self-deprecating admission of guilty consumption.
People invoked 40
Gillian Rose positive
Cited (as 'Jillian Rose') for Hegel contra Sociology; praised as one of the women who wrote the best recent books on Hegel.
Cited as the threshold marker before which feminism wasn't quite feminism yet; entry point for the historical narrative of feminism's stages.
Carlo Rovelli positive
Physicist and best popularizer of quantum mechanics who also does real original research; privately leftist; wrote Žižek a letter arguing humanity must form a global confederacy before or after nuclear war.
Alenka Zupančič positive
One of Žižek's very few Ljubljana friends; mentioned alongside Dolar as part of his small circle there.
Author of The Future of Nostalgia; Žižek knows her; cited for discussion of Qin Shi Huang's unification of units and its echo in the American dream.
Described as 'not totally personal enemies'; anecdote about using Derrida's anti-linear-time ideas to justify speaking overtime when Derrida looked at him angrily.
Rebecca Comay positive
Praised as one of the great recent Hegel scholars; 'makes me angry which means I really appreciate her'; cited as part of a wave of women writing the best books on Hegel.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Admires Lenin's intelligence and willingness to reverse position when someone ceased to be a threat; highlights paradox that repression intensified under NEP not war communism; cites Lenin's principle of expelling intellectuals for what they might do, not what they did.
Cited for 'whichever cat catches mice is a good cat' pragmatism; Žižek speculates that Deng may have thought opening to capitalism was a 'takeover' but it became 'assimilation'; Chinese capitalist growth analyzed as reaction to Tiananmen.
Jacques Lacan positive
Cited for the reversal of Freud's primordial father: the obscene jouissance-father is not prehistoric but appears when the symbolic father enters crisis; used to analyze Trump and Musk as authority figures.
Felix Dzerzhinsky positive
Founder of Cheka, described as 'almost an ideal', very moderate, consistently pressed Lenin to release prisoners, exemplifying a pre-Stalinist form of security logic.
Frank Ruda positive
Described as victim of a 'new Stalinist purge' in Western academia, lost his job at Dundee University in a Labour government budget cut; BBC News covered it.
Menshevik leader; described as 'very honest man, just didn't agree with Leninist project'; Lenin tried to send him money when he was dying poor in Swiss exile; Stalin blocked it.
Analyzed as an example of radical right's strategic use of minority/outsider figures; studied at the same institution Žižek teaches at; her outsider position makes her a more effective representative of conservative interests than direct establishment figures.
Judith Butler positive
Had substantive debates; agrees with her on constitutive negation in feminist identity and on women's informal everyday subordination as the most insidious form of oppression; but personally finds her 'sometimes boring politically correct bitch.'
Donald Trump negative
Analyzed as an obscene primordial father figure in Lacanian sense; his movement described as presenting as counter-revolution while being genuinely revolutionary in transforming state and capitalism.
Álvaro García Linera positive
Morales's vice president in Bolivia; Žižek is proud to be in contact with him; sees Bolivian governance under Morales as a model of moderate communism that raised ordinary living standards while preventing total elite boycott.
Named as a dinner companion for that evening before the talk; purely social name-drop.
Close friend; sharply disagrees on mass protest ecstasy ('this ecstatic feeling of unity my answer is fuck off'); follows Badiou's concept of worldlessness and cites him approvingly on that.
Elon Musk negative
Described as no longer an 'old capitalist'; DOGE chainsaw gesture (borrowed from Milei) mocked; argues that despite rhetoric of eliminating the state, under Musk's influence the state is getting stronger than ever; wishes him to 'go to Mars and disappear.'
Hanif Kureishi positive
Close friend, now severely paralyzed; cited for his insight on Hegelian concrete universality (his failed Pakistani diplomat father as universal type) and for the lesson from his NHS carers about human goodness under obligation.
Fredric Jameson positive
Close friend recently deceased; cited approvingly on alternate modernities as attempts to have capitalism without antagonisms, on fascism as alternate modernity, and on Antigone as constitution rather than decay of the polis; describes him as his 'Monsieur de la Palisse' who kept requesting manuscripts from the hospital hours before death.
Wang Hui negative
Chinese leftist intellectual and friend; Žižek disagrees with his 'leftist Confucian' position and follows Mao instead on the assessment of China's first emperor.
T. S. Eliot positive
Cites his claim that a truly new work of art rewrites the entire past; uses it to illustrate retroactive necessity in Hegel; notes personal association with the Faber and Faber building near Russell Square.
Conditionally agrees that Trumpism is actually changing capitalism; disagrees with the 'neo-feudalism' label as imprecise, Trumpian precarity lacks feudalism's clear hierarchical symbolic order.
Eva Perón positive
Credited as first in the world to legislate two days' menstrual leave for employed women (1950-51); Žižek acknowledges Peronism as generally bad/fascist while crediting this specific achievement.
Mladen Dolar positive
Close Ljubljana friend; cites his book on Rumors for the thesis that authority is by definition always already in crisis; recommends him to the audience.
Evo Morales positive
Cited as example of successful moderate communist governance in Bolivia; the tragic split with Lucho Arce over lithium resource politics is lamented.
Catherine Malabou positive
Listed among the women who wrote great books on Hegel, placed between Gillian Rose and Beatrice Longuenesse.
Nick Bostrom negative
Futurologist; received his book from audience member Elia; finds his approach 'quite interesting' but disagrees with his vision of post-automation happiness; his Marxist Heideggerian alternative (meditation, mystical experience) doubted.
Jon Elster positive
Norwegian rational actor theorist who 'probably hates me'; cited approvingly for the concept of 'states which are necessary byproducts', dignity and happiness cannot be directly planned and only emerge as side-effects.
South Korean-German philosopher Žižek does not like personally; cites his point that 'Asia' as a unified concept was a product of British/colonial projection, and his Shanzhai book on circular non-essentialist Chinese identity.
Rowan Williams positive
Ex-Archbishop of Canterbury, described as 'the only really intelligent Archbishop'; surprising good personal relationship; supports European unity, argues EU framework enabled Welsh and Scottish local identity; gave Žižek insight about Welsh lacking native obscenities.
Béatrice Longuenesse positive
Listed among the women who wrote great recent books on Hegel.
Mao Zedong positive
Follows Mao's position (against Wang Hui's leftist Confucianism) in evaluating China's first emperor.
Walter Benjamin positive
Cites Benjamin's metaphor of pulling the emergency brake on the train of history; uses it to argue for voluntary action against historical automatism.
Qin Shi Huang positive
First emperor of China; defends him against the 'terrorist' label, argues he applied the same laws to all, only liquidated the rich, and his unification came from a peripheral position, illustrating that political transformation requires an outside position.
Analyzed for her strategic intelligence in reading Indian economic statistics to court non-white voters while Labour assumed minority solidarity; illustrates how the right strategically appropriates outsider figures.
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited for Totem and Taboo (primordial father) and for 'we are both worse and better than we think'; psychoanalytic framework underlies discussion of authority, desire, and human nature.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Defends Hegel against the interpretation that his dialectic involves continuous logical flow; argues Hegel's logic shows antagonism → contingent new emergence → retroactive logical appearance; connects Hegel to quantum superposition.
What it argues
moderately conservative communism as political self-positioningglobal cooperation vs. strong nation-state as European legacyTrumpism as revolutionary transformation of capitalism not mere fascismprecarious gig labor as ideal ideological mystification of class strugglefeminism beyond formal rights to informal everyday material subordinationhappiness as necessary byproduct of vocation not a planned goallocalized communal alternatives within global capitalist worldlessness
Dialectical moves 10
“The harshest repression did not begin with war communism but with the New Economic Policy—freedom and oppression are not opposites but the latter is the reaction to the former.”
Economic liberalization produced the need for political repression because the emerging middle class threatened to develop anti-communist ideology; freedom and repression coincide rather than oppose.
“Trumpism presents itself as counter-revolution but in its effects it is the true revolution—while we talk about changing capitalism, they are doing it.”
The structural transformation of state and capital is happening not from the left but from the right-populist 'counter-revolutionary' tendency.
“Fascism is the best definition of alternate modernity—you try to do something new outside liberal capitalism, you think you are the boss, but the capitalist logic determines you.”
Attempts to create a non-liberal modernity do not escape capitalism's antagonisms but reproduce them under a new guise; the logic rules even when its agents think they have transcended it.
“Non-Western nations who critique Eurocentrism are practicing the worst of European tradition—the strong nation-state.”
Postcolonial critiques of Europe often reproduce Europe's most dangerous political legacy, the strong nationalist state with ethnic pressure on minorities.
“Coffee without cream is not the same as plain coffee—although materially identical, negation is inscribed in its symbolic identity.”
A thing's identity includes constitutive negation; what something is deprived of defines what it is, not just what it positively contains.
“Authority is by definition authority in crisis—from Plato onward, authority has always been perceived as already collapsing.”
Crisis is not an exceptional condition for authority but its constitutive mode; authority that is not experienced as in crisis does not register as authority.
“What Freud thought was the primordial father comes after the symbolic father—when the symbolic father's authority enters crisis, you get obscene figures like Trump.”
Lacan's reversal of Freud: the obscene jouissance-father is not prehistoric but emerges from the collapse of modern symbolic authority.
“Antigone is not the story of the decay of the harmonious polis but its very constitution—the gap between family and state law defines the state; before the gap you only have tribal society.”
The antagonism that appears to destroy political community is actually what first constitutes it; conflict is constitutive, not degenerative.
“The pursuit of happiness—isn't all human history a pursuit of unhappiness, systematically?”
The American ideal of the pursuit of happiness is inverted by the historical record; humans systematically pursue suffering, suggesting happiness must be sought obliquely.
“It was not for what they did that they were thrown out—it was for what they maybe will do in the near future.”
Lenin's principle for the philosophers' steamers: preventive expulsion targets potential future opposition, not actual past acts, the anticipation of class antagonism, not its expression.
Claims 17
asserts
Only global cooperation and coordination has a realistic chance of addressing the ecological crisis and AI; without it, developed countries will merely export their ecological problems to the Third World.global cooperation as communist necessity
asserts
The harshest Stalinist repression did not begin during the worst of war communism but precisely with the New Economic Policy (economic liberalization), because the new middle class it created needed to be prevented from developing anti-communist class consciousness.NEP, Stalinism, class consciousness
rejects
Ecstatic mass protests and the feeling of million-strong unity on squares are politically irrelevant; what matters is what happened to ordinary people's lives two or three months after the ecstasy.mass protest politics, Badiou's event politics
asserts
Trumpism presents itself as counter-revolution against woke/LGBT culture but in its effects is genuinely revolutionary, transforming the nature of the state and capitalism more radically than any left alternative.Trumpism as revolutionary transformation
asserts
Fascism is best defined as an alternate modernity—an attempt to have capitalist development without its antagonisms that fails because the capitalist logic ultimately determines the outcome regardless of intent.fascism, alternate modernity, Jameson
asserts
Precarious/gig work is the ideal ideological form of the new capitalism: it mystifies exploitation by presenting workers as small capitalists, and structurally prevents working-class unity by turning class companions into competitors.platform economy, class ideology
asserts
Trumpism and DOGE rhetoric about 'getting rid of the state' is belied by the fact that the American state is getting stronger and regulating more than ever under this tendency.Musk, DOGE, state power and libertarian ideology
asserts
Non-Western nations like India and Turkey who critique Eurocentrism are simultaneously practicing the worst European legacy: the strong nation-state with pressure on minorities.Eurocentrism, nation-state, Modi, Erdogan
asserts
History, left to itself, moves toward soft fascism or neo-feudalism; only voluntary action can interrupt this trajectory, following Benjamin's imperative to pull the emergency brake rather than accelerate.historical necessity, voluntarism, Benjamin
asserts
The formal equality of women today conceals a more insidious form of oppression: treating women as formally equal while in everyday practice expecting them to act 'properly as women'—small humiliations in material practice.feminism, formal vs. informal oppression
asserts
Women's experience of what they are deprived of is historically constituted: pre-modern feminism wanted coffee without milk (a better domestic role), then feminism became coffee without voting rights, without bank accounts—negation defines the feminist subject at each stage.feminist history, constitutive negation
asserts
Capitalism does not simply fit human nature; beyond a certain threshold, more money becomes counterproductive for creative work, suggesting socialism is not foreign to human nature.capitalism, human nature, incentives
asserts
Happiness cannot be planned; it is a necessary byproduct—like dignity—and emerges only indirectly from engagement with vocation, love, or creative work, not from pursuing happiness as a goal.happiness, Elster, states as necessary byproducts
rejects
The neo-feudalism thesis (Varoufakis, Judith Butler) is imprecise: Trumpian precarity lacks feudalism's hierarchical symbolic order where everyone knows their place; it is something wilder and structurally new.neo-feudalism, Varoufakis, Judith Butler
asserts
Trump and Musk are not traditional father-figures but obscene primordial fathers in Lacan's sense—jouissance figures who emerge precisely when symbolic authority is in crisis.authority, primordial father, Lacan, Trump, Musk
asserts
China's rapid capitalist growth under Deng was not in contradiction to Tiananmen repression but its direct consequence: accept capitalism, but for that very reason you need stronger state control.China, Tiananmen, capitalism and state repression
rejects
The phrase 'may you live in interesting times' as allegedly Chinese is a Western fabrication—Chinese friends have told Žižek they never heard it.orientalism, Chinese proverb, cultural projection
Quotes 15
“my answer is fuck off what interests me is what happens the day after by the day after I mean usually two three months when the ecstatic moment is over”Slavoj Žižek · rejection of mass-protest ecstasy; the day after logic
“I consider myself a moderately conservative communist”Slavoj Žižek · Žižek's self-description as political position
“it was not for what they did that they were thrown out it was for what they maybe will do they might do in the near future”Slavoj Žižek · Lenin's preventive logic; anticipating class antagonism
“coffee without cream please and the waiter answers sorry we have no cream only milk so I can only give you coffee without milk”Slavoj Žižek · constitutive negation; Hegelian identity includes deprivation
“our duty today is to pull the emergency brake on the train of history not to make it go on faster”Slavoj Žižek · Benjamin's emergency brake; voluntarism against historical fatalism
“while we talk about changing capitalism or even overcoming it they are doing it”Slavoj Žižek · Trumpism as actual revolution while the left theorizes
“you think you are the boss but the logic determines you”Slavoj Žižek · alternate modernity; fascism as capitalism's unconscious logic
“precarious work is for me an absolutely ideal form of this new stage that we are entering”Slavoj Žižek · gig economy as ideological mystification
“we are both worse and better than we think”Slavoj Žižek · Freud's complex human nature; neither simple egotists nor angels
“the problem is not envy the problem is not I want to have it the problem is I don't want you to have it”Slavoj Žižek · envy as natural pathology; spite over desire
“pursuit of happiness isn't all human history a pursuit of unhappiness systematically”Slavoj Žižek · happiness as byproduct; inversion of American constitutional ideal
“capitalism is disintegrating but it's just disintegrating you know it's not that there is some organized left waiting”Slavoj Žižek · pessimism about historical necessity; capitalism's collapse without successor
“maybe we should stop with this eternal complaining about how horrible things are and just make a list of good signs”Slavoj Žižek · turn toward positive examples and alternatives
“how dare you talk like this when I will like to be humiliated and beaten I will organize it and pay for it”Slavoj Žižek · autonomy and depersonalization in desire; woman's self-mastery in Babygirl
“in United Kingdom you no longer have a left you have one big ruling moderate right party it's called Labour party”Slavoj Žižek · collapse of British left; Labour as moderate right
Transcript 82 turns
Slavoj Žižek
I give a decision I don't want to lose time up to you up to a certain point what should we do the first option but it's not necessary because I have two texts which did not yet appear which cover the same topic and what I can do is today tonight already now I will be such a terrible snob you know I will have one hour before I go to dinner with Ralph Fiennes and so on so in this bit I'm impossible I know so in this time where
I give a decision I don't want to lose time up to you up to a certain point what should we do the first option but it's not necessary because I have two texts which did not yet appear which cover the same topic and what I can do is today tonight already now I will be such a terrible snob you know I will have one hour before I go to dinner with Ralph Fiennes and so on so in this bit I'm impossible I know so in this time where
unknown
I'll let her know you
I'll let her know you
Slavoj Žižek
want Elia no no she's coming back but you want Elia to email yeah yeah yeah because I will email to her these two texts so ah I'm sorry I you know you left the room Elia you left the room I was already spreading bad rumors about you that you left so you know what I wanted to do to you but I didn't but I feel obliged to tell you my dream because I didn't yet practice it but maybe you heard it it's my dream once Badiou threatened to do this to me to ask a friend to call me here and then in the middle of the talk my phone would start ring and I would tell you please wait a minute and would calmly talk with him for some five ten minutes about that's the point totally vulgar things you know how oh do we go to that movie theater but there is no good restaurant it side total vulgarities and then you know like I will not do
want Elia no no she's coming back but you want Elia to email yeah yeah yeah because I will email to her these two texts so ah I'm sorry I you know you left the room Elia you left the room I was already spreading bad rumors about you that you left so you know what I wanted to do to you but I didn't but I feel obliged to tell you my dream because I didn't yet practice it but maybe you heard it it's my dream once Badiou threatened to do this to me to ask a friend to call me here and then in the middle of the talk my phone would start ring and I would tell you please wait a minute and would calmly talk with him for some five ten minutes about that's the point totally vulgar things you know how oh do we go to that movie theater but there is no good restaurant it side total vulgarities and then you know like I will not do
unknown
this so I put
this so I put
Slavoj Žižek
it on silence what I
it on silence what I
unknown
so the choice is this
so the choice is this
Slavoj Žižek
one what if since I hope that after yesterday's warning most of you know the text what if I somehow resume better than I did yesterday what is bothering torturing haunting all of us our global and specific situation now and then we you react to this not only to this but also maybe to my text to what we were saying yesterday and then you or me one of us will probably detect the body language maybe no then if you want I can I can return to my to what I prepared but don't be afraid to miss anything because again in whatever case you will you will get it okay so what are my general premises first ah sorry you want to say some stupid introductory stuff I don't have to sorry no I don't need but you know now I will be the
one what if since I hope that after yesterday's warning most of you know the text what if I somehow resume better than I did yesterday what is bothering torturing haunting all of us our global and specific situation now and then we you react to this not only to this but also maybe to my text to what we were saying yesterday and then you or me one of us will probably detect the body language maybe no then if you want I can I can return to my to what I prepared but don't be afraid to miss anything because again in whatever case you will you will get it okay so what are my general premises first ah sorry you want to say some stupid introductory stuff I don't have to sorry no I don't need but you know now I will be the
unknown
worst male chauvinist male chauvinist you know women are so sensitive and fragile so I don't want to hurt you if you okay incidentally is it serious what is happening now in
worst male chauvinist male chauvinist you know women are so sensitive and fragile so I don't want to hurt you if you okay incidentally is it serious what is happening now in
Slavoj Žižek
Greece what is happening now in Greece I don't know aren't there some student demonstrations there's always been but this so this is not new Syriza no it's controlled by those in power yeah sorry okay let's go on so first a very general statement people that's the usual reproach of some leftists to me that I don't agree with it but I see their point that all your particular positions are moving more and more to the right no so in what sense are you then a communist at all okay you know my
Greece what is happening now in Greece I don't know aren't there some student demonstrations there's always been but this so this is not new Syriza no it's controlled by those in power yeah sorry okay let's go on so first a very general statement people that's the usual reproach of some leftists to me that I don't agree with it but I see their point that all your particular positions are moving more and more to the right no so in what sense are you then a communist at all okay you know my
unknown
paradoxical answer
paradoxical answer
Slavoj Žižek
I consider myself a moderately conservative communist why moderately conservative would you agree with this judgment or not the lesson of Syriza and other things and here I disagree with otherwise I respect him tremendously my good friend Badiou is that as I've written a couple of times I don't buy I despise this attitude of isn't it wonderful when on a big square one million of the people protest and so on this ecstatic feeling of unity my answer is fuck off what interests me is what happens the day after by the day after I mean usually two three months when the ecstatic moment is over how do I don't mean this term in disrespectful patronizing way but simply the majority of sorry for the term it's obscene ordinary people how was their actual life affected do they still see a perspective is it even worse than it was before I think that the cases are not lost for example I already mention it here I was in contact still am with Alvaro Garcia Linera Morales' vice president I think that till that coup d'etat against them they Moralesista they did a wonder in Bolivia they really really without any illusions raised the standard of the again sorry for the expression ordinary people as much as possible it did grow up at the same time they did it in such an intelligent mixture of pressure and compromise that they prevented total boycott of the rich of the capital you know they taxed them more but it functioned the problem is not their defeat a miracle happened you remember when there was a coup d'etat against them and an old right-wing lady took over and brought some big fat old version of the Bible to the parliament like now we are becoming again a Christian nation then this new regime called elections and Moralesistas won again it went okay the problem is and it's a serious problem I don't see a simple solution natural resources mines among other things Bolivia is extra rich in lithium no lithium is now a curse in many countries now it's very easy to come from a more developed Western country and say oh this will ruin environment and so on it is true but not totally true if you are ready to renounce part of the profit you can do it in a relatively ecologically safe way but the tragedy is that this led to a split between Lucho Arce who was economy minister for and the economy under Morales before who is now president and Morales himself Morales withdrew into illegal struggling there are armed conflicts and so on so it's a tragedy even that model sorry didn't work but what I want to say is that in this sense I am a conservative communist why communist in all naivety and I wonder if any of you has an argument if you with a very naive view forget about social complexities and so on ask yourself the obvious question what appears to be wrong with our world today you have obviously ecological crisis you have obviously the problem of artificial intelligence I'm not saying artificial intelligence that it will be necessarily bad but it is changing our world more radically than you think and there are wars and social unrest the growing gap between rich and poor and so on the problem the problem I see here is that do you see any other and it's incredible how many people although they would never use the term communism agree with me here it's a very common sensical view look at ecology isn't it clear that only a global action collaboration coordination has a chance to do something if we don't cooperate we are lost then we the developed West will be doing ecological struggle will mean for us to export problems to poor Third World countries or whatever so or artificial intelligence again you cannot you can put in one country all the limitations but you know you have tax heavens you have big comp big corporations who do their research uncontrollably and so again it's only a global cooperation as my friend I'm boasting a little bit because I'm proud to be in contact with him I didn't know that he is such a leftist privately Carlo Rovelli if you as I began read him he is the best popularizer of quantum mechanics but then I did my usual Stalinist test I asked people around him is he just a popularizer or does he at the same time do the real stuff all even those who do not agree with me told him no he does the real stuff you know so as he wrote me in a letter there will have to be at some point if we want to survive a global confederacy the only choice is will it happen before or after a global nuclear war that's his view you know that so again maybe I'm dogmatic here but that's my first premise communism is not this type of a surplus you know like oh in developed countries we are not doing so bad I often get this question from some Norwegians I understand them because Norway is if I get it correctly the only surviving and more or less there are limits also there fully functioning welfare state so they say why why for us why shouldn't we maintain the way our state functions my answer is that yes we can take something from Norway I am otherwise not mystifying Scandinavian countries you know but they have something why did they survive so well no not just they didn't that after but the general crisis it was basically from when communism disappears 1990s no you know what they did this is the spirit that we miss maybe the leftists who told me exaggerate a little bit but I asked around it's allegedly true they still maintain a kind of a precisely spirit of global social cooperation they saw hard times coming so what they did is something very naive they brought together trade unions banks big capitalists sorry and the state and so on ecologists and they reached a compromise okay maybe we sacrifice a little bit of this but and not that and they reached a compromise and the compromise worked it works that's almost unique in in today's times so what I'm saying is that that's my first premise moderately by moderately conservative I mean whenever you enact a radical measure and we will have to do it that's why I call it war-like communism that when I say I'm a communist I say war communist you know not that type of what people usually associate with communism I'm sorry I will repeat a joke maybe you know it I love it from old no I didn't tell it this time here from old period 1970s Brezhnev era where there is a big poster in Moscow in years we will reach full communism and a guy there starts to jump out of joy and people ask him why are you doing this he said I have a mortal cancer I will not be alive at that time you know so I'm not talking about that communism but I learned something so interesting yeah because people tell me listen we are too poor for socialist democracy and so on eh eh eh I now read even Lenin is not clear Lenin and some people around him and I did something that usually liberals like to do but they don't want to talk about one crucial thing when did the real harsh Stalinism emerge with strong secret police and so on that we all ironically know and love you know when it's explicitly clear not in the worst of war communism when the civil war was going on but in when the party decided Lenin just won many people were against on NEP New Economic Policy which allows a certain degree of privatization land to individual peasants small factories and so on and Lenin explicitly wrote that this is a dangerous moment because Lenin was quite intelligent he was afraid that de facto a new class of moderately rich but nonetheless rich people will emerge and spontaneously that's part of the class logic spontaneously they will look for some ideology at that time that's very interesting in '22 after five years almost of communist rule in all those worst times do you know that at some point Bolsheviks held the part of like less than of the Russian territory but universities were still relatively free in the bourgeois sense there were many big professors who were criticizing the regime isn't this wonderful because liberals usually think oh this should be would be a liberal era New Economic Policy more economic freedom and at the same time opening no the reaction of those in power was now that we are creating a new middle class we should be very attentive and prevent this new middle class to become aware of itself in a properly ideological anti-communist terms that's why at the same time that economic situation instantly grew much better all of a sudden even hunger was over Soviet Union or what it's called I don't know when the point was exporting food the situation was much better at that point they organized so-called it's wonderful episode philosophers' steamers they were called the best known is one with many big names theologist sociologist who were most of them leftists but not Bolshevik leftists they put them on that steamer with that family and it was not that police came in the middle of the night these were still pre-Stalinist times you were informed and so on and they took them to Germany not of any because of some Nazi contacts but because Germany at that point was the first the only Western power which made diplomatic relations with renewed them with Soviet Union and but again the idea was nonetheless a slightly darker one it was as Lenin put it clearly in some text it was not for what they did that they were thrown out it was for what they maybe will do they might do in the near future you know they wanted no opposition so that new class fully self-conscious class will not emerge it was nonetheless at the same time done within a way unthinkable under Stalinism for example the much feared person but a person who is for me almost an ideal Dzerzhinsky the founder of Cheka later KGB he was an incredible person I read a biography of him he was very moderate he was all the time pressuring Lenin listen that guy is in prison for a year he is not bad we should let him out and so on and Lenin's answer was usually no no no are you crazy this guy will be dangerous but what I want to say is that what is this is what I still admire in Lenin in spite of his brutality of political acts the moment he perceived that the guy is not really dangerous he changed his position for example was it Rijkov or who I don't there was an an old Menshevik historian who opposed Bolsheviks and Lenin insisted to put him on the list like list of those to be deported then he learned from secret police that this guy in some shitty town there in Ural old and ill very ill no longer active you know what was Lenin's reaction okay now if he is not dangerous of us then this totally changes situation he intervened that because this were times of civil war of rationing still that his food ration was redoubled and so on or look at the greatest anti-Leninist I'm sorry for bothering you this Julian Martov he was the leader of Mensheviks very honest man just didn't agree with the Leninist project Lenin learned in '23 that Martov is dying very poor not enough money in some Swiss small apartment didn't even have money for for doctors and Lenin raised the issue of whatever they call it politburo the center of our session let's send him some money and Stalin blocked it of course you know why spend the money on him but what I want to say is that nonetheless you got my paradox that's crucial that the situation was much more open in war communism oppression began precisely with New Economic Policy and maybe this will resonate with you because do you agree some of my friends from China claim that uh uh this fast growth of capitalism was not in contradiction with Tiananmen repression but its consequence a reaction to it you know like let's not play with democracy let's open up to capital whatever you call it it's a big debate what type of but let's open to capitalism but for that very reason we need a stronger state control you know so we have to take into account all these paradoxes that's my first point and I would like you very much to your reaction to this like convince me please that I'm wrong I know it's a pessimist view but the tragedy is that in contrast to classical Marxist stance which still has this how should I call it teleological necessity built into it you know like there is something perceived as under quotation marks normal progress of history capitalism is disintegrating opening up the path for socialist revolution now in the last years as I forgot his name a German leftist economist wrote a wonderful book where he says yes capitalism is disintegrating but it's just disintegrating you know it's not that there is there is some organized left waiting no the one who is waiting to take over are maybe even worse than capitalism we were used to so this is why I will not repeat it you know it if you know a little bit of my work this brings me to my second point obsession with quantum mechanics my whole idea is this quantum notion of collapse you know you have so-called superpositions when something happens it's always accompanied by a series of other possibilities and I think that here quantum physics comes close to Hegelian dialectics and they put it it's an old joke I know you know it but I will give now a new accent to it determine what a thing is you should always put it in the context of its superpositions what it might happened but didn't and so on you know the joke this one I didn't use it here maybe I did yesterday but I would say it comes close to times I put it here you know that eternal joke from Ninotchka you know coffee without cream please and the waiter answers sorry we have no cream only milk so I can only give you coffee without milk it's not a nonsense it's a very Hegelian definition that coffee without cream is not the same although materially it's the same as plain coffee but it's not simply plain coffee it's a coffee into the identity of which in our symbolic social universe negation is implied and I have once I'm sorry if I repeat myself for some of you years ago a nice debate with Judith Butler where on some marginal points at least and this was one we agreed you know where she said that uh that in this sense what is not a thing is part of its identity ah where she agreed and even suggested to me thing is that the same goes for feminism that's my eternal example you had the more traditional pre-modern feminism which still accept even if they don't call it subordination of women this idea that there is a proper role for women it doesn't necessarily mean just homework it can mean also some under quotation marks lower intellectual functions like it's so nice to observe this in communist countries although they were nominally nominal for women's rights and there always were some women ministers in the government but strictly limited with one or two exceptions to you can guess to what to this not crucial cultural ministries health education culture you know that's for women not secret police not economy and so on you know I my idea was always my god I would like to have a really tough woman like my ideal forget about Antigone Medea you know what she did to her children she is the she is the true woman for me you know eh what with you huh huh you are not for Medea Julian was saying about Medea yeah because she very wisely opposed Medea to to woman who is woman only as a mother no Medea is for him a living proof that a woman cannot be reduced to procreation but I I agree it's still an extreme example yeah it is I agree that's why I'm not saying that all women should act like Medea just that Medea should be at the head of some pop of secret police okay so let's go on you know this is what Judith suggested to me that you can like women complain of what rights they are deprived of but the development of feminism means that even if women's real situation doesn't change but it does change gradually hopefully for the better the problem is what women experience as what they are deprived of in the early pre-modern before Mary Wollstonecraft feminism if you cannot even call it feminism it was more like you know we should be given a proper chance fathers husbands should not be treated we should be given food blah blah so they wanted to play their patriarchal role but in slightly better conditions then so their woman without milk was just a woman term too much terrorized they just wanted to be women still within the family in a sub then the revolution comes when they started to encroach into public sphere you know like this was a big moment in the French Revolution where only with Jacobins there was a moment when they oscillated should they allow even my beloved great Jacobins should they allow women to have public functions and just before this there was some local battle against counter-revolution where women participated and then of course some representatives of women said in Assemblée Nationale ah we were good enough to fight there but and this won the argument it's with Napoleon that we return to under-feminism so you see before you change the reality of women you must redefine if you compare them sorry for this tasteless comparison to coffee coffee without what first is just coffee without milk we want a little bit of better life the husband shouldn't be big then you go on we are coffee without voting human rights we are coffee without a bank account do you know that in England or some Western countries I don't know even was it when did women gain the this is incredibly how late this happens I didn't know when did women gain the right to have a fully autonomous bank account sorry yeah it's incredible how late yes if you were married the husband had to have the right to prohibit you access to your own bank account and so on and so on so you see so and Judith said this very nicely she even added something which nicely surprised me because sometimes she can be this boring politically correct bitch who I don't know now but she said something very nice she said that the most disgusting form of oppression of women in our era where we all pretend oo equal rights you know is this type of oppression where you treat women formally as equal like no I'm not a master treat me as equal you share jokes and so on but but at the everyday level of practices you still expect her to act properly as a woman you know like Judith invented this example like let's say we are together no and you but you are not so stupid you're already active bitch and let's say that you would protest and we would conclude that we treat each other as equal no I'm Slavoj I'm not professor senator what stupid joke I used yesterday but then at a certain point I say oh my god I I'm thirsty would you please bring me some coffee and so on like you know these small details of material practice so another horrible thing that I will tell you here to provoke you you know who are TERFs no trans-exclusionary radical feminists I got my point I don't agree with them basically but at would you agree or not or is it too much for you but then one point I do namely when they emphasize that being a woman in our society is not just this superficial mark you dress as a woman you put lipstick and so on what would annoy me if I were to be an actual biological woman would be a man who sorry for the obscenity of my expression now who even didn't have the decency to have his penis cut off or balls just who would have thought oh it makes me feel nice if I put lipstick on and so on and demand to be treated as a woman this is a marginal aspect of TERFs I am basically against them but nonetheless where they think just about vulgar things like they are not vulgar but ordinary common sorry like giving birth menstruation having period and all that these are material practices which mark their daily life for women and here I even respect some soft fascists for example you can
I consider myself a moderately conservative communist why moderately conservative would you agree with this judgment or not the lesson of Syriza and other things and here I disagree with otherwise I respect him tremendously my good friend Badiou is that as I've written a couple of times I don't buy I despise this attitude of isn't it wonderful when on a big square one million of the people protest and so on this ecstatic feeling of unity my answer is fuck off what interests me is what happens the day after by the day after I mean usually two three months when the ecstatic moment is over how do I don't mean this term in disrespectful patronizing way but simply the majority of sorry for the term it's obscene ordinary people how was their actual life affected do they still see a perspective is it even worse than it was before I think that the cases are not lost for example I already mention it here I was in contact still am with Alvaro Garcia Linera Morales' vice president I think that till that coup d'etat against them they Moralesista they did a wonder in Bolivia they really really without any illusions raised the standard of the again sorry for the expression ordinary people as much as possible it did grow up at the same time they did it in such an intelligent mixture of pressure and compromise that they prevented total boycott of the rich of the capital you know they taxed them more but it functioned the problem is not their defeat a miracle happened you remember when there was a coup d'etat against them and an old right-wing lady took over and brought some big fat old version of the Bible to the parliament like now we are becoming again a Christian nation then this new regime called elections and Moralesistas won again it went okay the problem is and it's a serious problem I don't see a simple solution natural resources mines among other things Bolivia is extra rich in lithium no lithium is now a curse in many countries now it's very easy to come from a more developed Western country and say oh this will ruin environment and so on it is true but not totally true if you are ready to renounce part of the profit you can do it in a relatively ecologically safe way but the tragedy is that this led to a split between Lucho Arce who was economy minister for and the economy under Morales before who is now president and Morales himself Morales withdrew into illegal struggling there are armed conflicts and so on so it's a tragedy even that model sorry didn't work but what I want to say is that in this sense I am a conservative communist why communist in all naivety and I wonder if any of you has an argument if you with a very naive view forget about social complexities and so on ask yourself the obvious question what appears to be wrong with our world today you have obviously ecological crisis you have obviously the problem of artificial intelligence I'm not saying artificial intelligence that it will be necessarily bad but it is changing our world more radically than you think and there are wars and social unrest the growing gap between rich and poor and so on the problem the problem I see here is that do you see any other and it's incredible how many people although they would never use the term communism agree with me here it's a very common sensical view look at ecology isn't it clear that only a global action collaboration coordination has a chance to do something if we don't cooperate we are lost then we the developed West will be doing ecological struggle will mean for us to export problems to poor Third World countries or whatever so or artificial intelligence again you cannot you can put in one country all the limitations but you know you have tax heavens you have big comp big corporations who do their research uncontrollably and so again it's only a global cooperation as my friend I'm boasting a little bit because I'm proud to be in contact with him I didn't know that he is such a leftist privately Carlo Rovelli if you as I began read him he is the best popularizer of quantum mechanics but then I did my usual Stalinist test I asked people around him is he just a popularizer or does he at the same time do the real stuff all even those who do not agree with me told him no he does the real stuff you know so as he wrote me in a letter there will have to be at some point if we want to survive a global confederacy the only choice is will it happen before or after a global nuclear war that's his view you know that so again maybe I'm dogmatic here but that's my first premise communism is not this type of a surplus you know like oh in developed countries we are not doing so bad I often get this question from some Norwegians I understand them because Norway is if I get it correctly the only surviving and more or less there are limits also there fully functioning welfare state so they say why why for us why shouldn't we maintain the way our state functions my answer is that yes we can take something from Norway I am otherwise not mystifying Scandinavian countries you know but they have something why did they survive so well no not just they didn't that after but the general crisis it was basically from when communism disappears 1990s no you know what they did this is the spirit that we miss maybe the leftists who told me exaggerate a little bit but I asked around it's allegedly true they still maintain a kind of a precisely spirit of global social cooperation they saw hard times coming so what they did is something very naive they brought together trade unions banks big capitalists sorry and the state and so on ecologists and they reached a compromise okay maybe we sacrifice a little bit of this but and not that and they reached a compromise and the compromise worked it works that's almost unique in in today's times so what I'm saying is that that's my first premise moderately by moderately conservative I mean whenever you enact a radical measure and we will have to do it that's why I call it war-like communism that when I say I'm a communist I say war communist you know not that type of what people usually associate with communism I'm sorry I will repeat a joke maybe you know it I love it from old no I didn't tell it this time here from old period 1970s Brezhnev era where there is a big poster in Moscow in years we will reach full communism and a guy there starts to jump out of joy and people ask him why are you doing this he said I have a mortal cancer I will not be alive at that time you know so I'm not talking about that communism but I learned something so interesting yeah because people tell me listen we are too poor for socialist democracy and so on eh eh eh I now read even Lenin is not clear Lenin and some people around him and I did something that usually liberals like to do but they don't want to talk about one crucial thing when did the real harsh Stalinism emerge with strong secret police and so on that we all ironically know and love you know when it's explicitly clear not in the worst of war communism when the civil war was going on but in when the party decided Lenin just won many people were against on NEP New Economic Policy which allows a certain degree of privatization land to individual peasants small factories and so on and Lenin explicitly wrote that this is a dangerous moment because Lenin was quite intelligent he was afraid that de facto a new class of moderately rich but nonetheless rich people will emerge and spontaneously that's part of the class logic spontaneously they will look for some ideology at that time that's very interesting in '22 after five years almost of communist rule in all those worst times do you know that at some point Bolsheviks held the part of like less than of the Russian territory but universities were still relatively free in the bourgeois sense there were many big professors who were criticizing the regime isn't this wonderful because liberals usually think oh this should be would be a liberal era New Economic Policy more economic freedom and at the same time opening no the reaction of those in power was now that we are creating a new middle class we should be very attentive and prevent this new middle class to become aware of itself in a properly ideological anti-communist terms that's why at the same time that economic situation instantly grew much better all of a sudden even hunger was over Soviet Union or what it's called I don't know when the point was exporting food the situation was much better at that point they organized so-called it's wonderful episode philosophers' steamers they were called the best known is one with many big names theologist sociologist who were most of them leftists but not Bolshevik leftists they put them on that steamer with that family and it was not that police came in the middle of the night these were still pre-Stalinist times you were informed and so on and they took them to Germany not of any because of some Nazi contacts but because Germany at that point was the first the only Western power which made diplomatic relations with renewed them with Soviet Union and but again the idea was nonetheless a slightly darker one it was as Lenin put it clearly in some text it was not for what they did that they were thrown out it was for what they maybe will do they might do in the near future you know they wanted no opposition so that new class fully self-conscious class will not emerge it was nonetheless at the same time done within a way unthinkable under Stalinism for example the much feared person but a person who is for me almost an ideal Dzerzhinsky the founder of Cheka later KGB he was an incredible person I read a biography of him he was very moderate he was all the time pressuring Lenin listen that guy is in prison for a year he is not bad we should let him out and so on and Lenin's answer was usually no no no are you crazy this guy will be dangerous but what I want to say is that what is this is what I still admire in Lenin in spite of his brutality of political acts the moment he perceived that the guy is not really dangerous he changed his position for example was it Rijkov or who I don't there was an an old Menshevik historian who opposed Bolsheviks and Lenin insisted to put him on the list like list of those to be deported then he learned from secret police that this guy in some shitty town there in Ural old and ill very ill no longer active you know what was Lenin's reaction okay now if he is not dangerous of us then this totally changes situation he intervened that because this were times of civil war of rationing still that his food ration was redoubled and so on or look at the greatest anti-Leninist I'm sorry for bothering you this Julian Martov he was the leader of Mensheviks very honest man just didn't agree with the Leninist project Lenin learned in '23 that Martov is dying very poor not enough money in some Swiss small apartment didn't even have money for for doctors and Lenin raised the issue of whatever they call it politburo the center of our session let's send him some money and Stalin blocked it of course you know why spend the money on him but what I want to say is that nonetheless you got my paradox that's crucial that the situation was much more open in war communism oppression began precisely with New Economic Policy and maybe this will resonate with you because do you agree some of my friends from China claim that uh uh this fast growth of capitalism was not in contradiction with Tiananmen repression but its consequence a reaction to it you know like let's not play with democracy let's open up to capital whatever you call it it's a big debate what type of but let's open to capitalism but for that very reason we need a stronger state control you know so we have to take into account all these paradoxes that's my first point and I would like you very much to your reaction to this like convince me please that I'm wrong I know it's a pessimist view but the tragedy is that in contrast to classical Marxist stance which still has this how should I call it teleological necessity built into it you know like there is something perceived as under quotation marks normal progress of history capitalism is disintegrating opening up the path for socialist revolution now in the last years as I forgot his name a German leftist economist wrote a wonderful book where he says yes capitalism is disintegrating but it's just disintegrating you know it's not that there is there is some organized left waiting no the one who is waiting to take over are maybe even worse than capitalism we were used to so this is why I will not repeat it you know it if you know a little bit of my work this brings me to my second point obsession with quantum mechanics my whole idea is this quantum notion of collapse you know you have so-called superpositions when something happens it's always accompanied by a series of other possibilities and I think that here quantum physics comes close to Hegelian dialectics and they put it it's an old joke I know you know it but I will give now a new accent to it determine what a thing is you should always put it in the context of its superpositions what it might happened but didn't and so on you know the joke this one I didn't use it here maybe I did yesterday but I would say it comes close to times I put it here you know that eternal joke from Ninotchka you know coffee without cream please and the waiter answers sorry we have no cream only milk so I can only give you coffee without milk it's not a nonsense it's a very Hegelian definition that coffee without cream is not the same although materially it's the same as plain coffee but it's not simply plain coffee it's a coffee into the identity of which in our symbolic social universe negation is implied and I have once I'm sorry if I repeat myself for some of you years ago a nice debate with Judith Butler where on some marginal points at least and this was one we agreed you know where she said that uh that in this sense what is not a thing is part of its identity ah where she agreed and even suggested to me thing is that the same goes for feminism that's my eternal example you had the more traditional pre-modern feminism which still accept even if they don't call it subordination of women this idea that there is a proper role for women it doesn't necessarily mean just homework it can mean also some under quotation marks lower intellectual functions like it's so nice to observe this in communist countries although they were nominally nominal for women's rights and there always were some women ministers in the government but strictly limited with one or two exceptions to you can guess to what to this not crucial cultural ministries health education culture you know that's for women not secret police not economy and so on you know I my idea was always my god I would like to have a really tough woman like my ideal forget about Antigone Medea you know what she did to her children she is the she is the true woman for me you know eh what with you huh huh you are not for Medea Julian was saying about Medea yeah because she very wisely opposed Medea to to woman who is woman only as a mother no Medea is for him a living proof that a woman cannot be reduced to procreation but I I agree it's still an extreme example yeah it is I agree that's why I'm not saying that all women should act like Medea just that Medea should be at the head of some pop of secret police okay so let's go on you know this is what Judith suggested to me that you can like women complain of what rights they are deprived of but the development of feminism means that even if women's real situation doesn't change but it does change gradually hopefully for the better the problem is what women experience as what they are deprived of in the early pre-modern before Mary Wollstonecraft feminism if you cannot even call it feminism it was more like you know we should be given a proper chance fathers husbands should not be treated we should be given food blah blah so they wanted to play their patriarchal role but in slightly better conditions then so their woman without milk was just a woman term too much terrorized they just wanted to be women still within the family in a sub then the revolution comes when they started to encroach into public sphere you know like this was a big moment in the French Revolution where only with Jacobins there was a moment when they oscillated should they allow even my beloved great Jacobins should they allow women to have public functions and just before this there was some local battle against counter-revolution where women participated and then of course some representatives of women said in Assemblée Nationale ah we were good enough to fight there but and this won the argument it's with Napoleon that we return to under-feminism so you see before you change the reality of women you must redefine if you compare them sorry for this tasteless comparison to coffee coffee without what first is just coffee without milk we want a little bit of better life the husband shouldn't be big then you go on we are coffee without voting human rights we are coffee without a bank account do you know that in England or some Western countries I don't know even was it when did women gain the this is incredibly how late this happens I didn't know when did women gain the right to have a fully autonomous bank account sorry yeah it's incredible how late yes if you were married the husband had to have the right to prohibit you access to your own bank account and so on and so on so you see so and Judith said this very nicely she even added something which nicely surprised me because sometimes she can be this boring politically correct bitch who I don't know now but she said something very nice she said that the most disgusting form of oppression of women in our era where we all pretend oo equal rights you know is this type of oppression where you treat women formally as equal like no I'm not a master treat me as equal you share jokes and so on but but at the everyday level of practices you still expect her to act properly as a woman you know like Judith invented this example like let's say we are together no and you but you are not so stupid you're already active bitch and let's say that you would protest and we would conclude that we treat each other as equal no I'm Slavoj I'm not professor senator what stupid joke I used yesterday but then at a certain point I say oh my god I I'm thirsty would you please bring me some coffee and so on like you know these small details of material practice so another horrible thing that I will tell you here to provoke you you know who are TERFs no trans-exclusionary radical feminists I got my point I don't agree with them basically but at would you agree or not or is it too much for you but then one point I do namely when they emphasize that being a woman in our society is not just this superficial mark you dress as a woman you put lipstick and so on what would annoy me if I were to be an actual biological woman would be a man who sorry for the obscenity of my expression now who even didn't have the decency to have his penis cut off or balls just who would have thought oh it makes me feel nice if I put lipstick on and so on and demand to be treated as a woman this is a marginal aspect of TERFs I am basically against them but nonetheless where they think just about vulgar things like they are not vulgar but ordinary common sorry like giving birth menstruation having period and all that these are material practices which mark their daily life for women and here I even respect some soft fascists for example you can
unknown
correct
correct
Slavoj Žižek
me if I'm wrong but you know who was the first in the world to give women two days if they were employed of free holiday when they have period Evita Peron in '50 '51 one must say
me if I'm wrong but you know who was the first in the world to give women two days if they were employed of free holiday when they have period Evita Peron in '50 '51 one must say
unknown
this this was
this this was
Slavoj Žižek
they did it although I think that Peron was generally bad it was a form of fascism but they did it so again let's go on so that I don't get lost my idea is that we have this superposition of options and it's not clear today we cannot count on some deeper historical necessity like even non-deterministic Marxists like to say if we don't screw it up there will be socialism and they concede we may screw it up and so on but no it's really open I would even say following Benjamin who said that you know our duty today is to pull the emergency brake on the train of history not to make it go on faster I even think that if left to itself history moves to a new form of maybe soft fascism or neo-feudalism or however we call it only our voluntary action can can prevent this what I mean by this now let me be very precise the last theoretical detour is not that everything is contingent but the motive that I repeat all the time in a contingent way one of these possibilities will establish it as a winning one and then the whole history will be perceived as necessary leading to this contingency I'm now if you permit me two three minutes of let's nonetheless play serious philosophy of Hegel Hegel is not as very intelligent readers like my two good friends I got their new substantial text Rebecca Comay and she makes me angry which means I really appreciate her you know why because it's hard for me as an old male chauvinist to admit this but in the last years almost all great books on Hegel were written by women I'm sorry it's first Jillian Rose Hegel contra sociology then then it was sorry Catherine Malabou but between the two is Beatrice Longuenesse yes and others Rebecca Comay then there is this Rocio Zambrano from Puerto Rico who now teaches all around the United States and Rebecca Comay and she and Frank Ruda who is now the victim of this new Stalinist purge in the Western academia you know is as I've already mentioned it here I think this is not a joke she lost he lost his job at Dundee University it was even the BBC News not him but the radical reduction done typically by Labour worse than Conservatives so you know what's my joke here double joke I know I used it here but I love it it's so obscene that in United Kingdom you no longer have a left some Margaret Thatcher you have one big ruling moderate right party it's called Labour party and then you have some crazy even more rightist party now comes don't be mad at me it will sound racist but I don't mean it how do you then distinguish between moderate centrist right and radical right where in radical right you find more women and Indians and others if you want moderate right you get white men mostly okay with honorable exception of your how do you call it the guy who does the budget Rachel something yeah but but nonetheless don't underestimate this phenomena you know this rediscovery of women's and other racist other races in the extreme right don't say oh they are just cheating this is a trick sorry it's more than a trick but let's go on so my point is that whichever version will win it will change not only the future but the past also I refer here to my eternally quoted line from T.S. Eliot who said that a really new work of art rewrites changes the entire past and I always remember him do you know why when you walk here by past towards Russell Square by passing SOAS you know that the first building on the left was Faber and Faber where now they moved somewhere else where Eliot was working he did his great work there around the corner okay so what I'm saying is that it's crucial to see and Hegel knew this you have a Hegelian passage from a deadlock a critical situation then something new emerges and resolves the crisis usual interpreters of Hegel read this as Hegel's great limitation there are no radical cuts in Hegel in Hegel everything flows logically from one category to the other no I think Hegel's logic is much more delicate if you read him closely you have an antagonism a tension then something new emerges and the passage appears logical but only retroactively there is always in so-called dialectical synthesis an act of contingency of cut yes there is continuity but retroactive continuity I don't have time I'm losing too much but so just to conclude so here I have a problem also with regard to the test against me and I appreciate it I mean critical text you know where I as I already mentioned yesterday would like to hear more from you again as I've written a couple of times I'm afraid of the intellectual laziness of the left what do I mean by this obviously something horrible is happening today with Trump and others no not just with Trump and the easiest way is to say oh it's horrible so what the most horrible thing that we remember fascism Nazism so it must be fascism maybe it is but tell me more in what precise way it's not just it's literally a liberal fascism we can debate this but just to conclude back to China it was you I think who mentioned yesterday this opposition between take-over and what was the other point assimilation yes here things get complex for me I will again repeat a crucial insight for me from Fred Jameson of it happen China Chinese history much earlier in 13th century and when they were open when they were occupied or whatever by Mongols no wasn't this an example of assimilation but not of the occupied to the occupier that's what I almost the other way around which was good for the China yes they occupied China but gradually they assimilated more they didn't ruin Chinese culture you know who told me this correct me if I'm wrong I spoke with a Chinese friend and he told me something wonderful maybe it was a myth correct me if I'm wrong but I liked what I heard it's that in China even today if you want to say some street in a big city is safe you use an expression like it's as if it's controlled by the Mongols or whatever you know it's a myth probably I know how many images are here I know that for example all Western intellectuals me included quoted that phrase allegedly from China that the greatest curse is may you live in interesting times which what my Chinese friends maybe you can correct me are telling me never heard of this this is Western invention on China so what I'm saying is that you know what often can happen is that it's not just a assimilation versus takeover what I would be afraid is that maybe even Deng Xiaoping and others they thought it's just a takeover but gradually it turns into assimilation you know what I'm saying here what my enemy and this should now bring me back more to what you said yesterday my enemy here is the notion of alternate modernities Fred Jameson whom I follow here and as I already said here or didn't I when I don't know when I was here I'm he was really my good friend you know why I wrote that text which was cheating I just went into my PC and said Fred Jameson and just pull out all the fragments on him you know and wrote a very popular text but how he died I was contacting him the last days you know in France I've written this in my text they have this wonderful expression a series of jokes called Monsieur de la Palisse about Monsieur de la Palisse a name a complete idiot who takes things literally and you have a whole series of these totally flat wisdoms which are in some sense true but they are stupid like the best known is one minute before he died Monsieur de la Palisse was still alive of course you know my favorite is do you have the same expression in English in Slovene we have it somebody if somebody if you are too self-enclosed no somebody tells you go round and do you use this expression we do and Germans do I think go around and throw your eyes around a little bit because you know this Monsieur de la Palisse is alone can't get a woman and mother tells him go to the town fair there and throw your eyes around a little bit you will find some woman to approach and then he comes in the evening back home sad mother said what was wrong he said well I did as you told me I went to a butcher I bought some pigs and cows eyes and I went there and was throwing them around and nothing you know okay Fred Jameson was my Monsieur de la Palisse of the first joke you know that he behaved as if okay I had a heart attack blah blah but let's go on as if nothing happened his family told me one day he was already in hospital the last message a couple of hours before he died his message was I need tomorrow he already had his PC there these books that manuscript and so on he literally behaved as if like one day before Fred Jameson died he was still alive it was absolutely incredible you know and so in his critique of alternate modernity he made a nice point that this was a popular Third World or not just Third World in the sense of undeveloped part but non-Western liberal dream that we can we can do our own non-capitalist modernity the idea was again what I was improvising yesterday about Bang-on-un we can do our own dynamic development but avoiding capitalist antagonisms no and be even more efficient in this way Fred Jameson says that no these attempts are ultimately attempts to have capitalism without its antagonisms it's basic and he was right when the last time I met we talked about this he agreed with me when I said sorry guys in Europe we already tried alternate modernity in 20th century it was called fascism fascism the best definition of fascism is it's an alternate modernity so in this sense although you do something new it's not liberal capitalism the way we know it you think you are taking it over but the capitalist logic determines you you know you think you are the boss but the logic determines you I'm sorry if I did my usual thing didn't I say five ten minutes that I will just no okay that's my contribution with Derrida once we were not totally personal enemies I used this because I was speaking too long and he looked at me angrily and I said listen I'm following your line I'm fighting against the linear metaphysical notion of time you know like in my time five minutes is one hour no that's life so please I can go on but I would really like you now to counter-attack in whatever sense you want I can go on if it doesn't work you I don't want to be the one who chooses go on not me there Elia is there yeah yeah so you want to go to questions now is that what you said yeah because I think there were so many interesting things together sorry that we dealt with is he not here for example the most profound Marxist insight into the link between chocolates and pedophilia in Belgium and so on is the guy here no ah you are here yeah yeah sorry you didn't ah because I know why but you did the right ah you have a chocolate for him yeah yeah no because maybe the mistake was like I'm not a child but your head would scare children off you know now you have better chances sorry would he want yeah please so yeah it's the left potentially appropriating rootedness I said appropriate rootedness yeah rooted rootedness yeah yeah yeah yeah I think I know you're for global cooperation so um but how to yeah how to how to how to resolve this being citizen of the world or being citizen of a particular place um yeah that's that's one that's one question um yeah okay okay very brief answer because I don't want to repeat the mistake of you and of my yesterday answer too long you know what's my hope here and that's the point of that text the enemy is for me more and more the worst of European tradition that survives today the idea of a strong nation-state and that's what makes me sad about India Turkey and so on with all their critique of Eurocentrism and so on they are practicing precisely the worst thing from European legacy you know what Modi is doing strong nation-state which means pressure on Muslims and so on Erdogan now that it's horrible there is a historic chance that Kurds offered to dissolve their whatever was PKK resistance organization no Erdogan's answer is almost the same and Putin when Ukraine said okay okay take everything you want no Erdogan wants more and maybe I'm wrong you should but sometimes I get the impression that even China has some tendencies towards a strong Han-dominated state you should tell me how do you look upon this I am afraid here to be the victim of Western filtered media how is what is in your eyes the real actual situation with what we read in the Western media which is uh Tibet and Uyghurs there in that Muslim part is there oppression is there a I know what China has done I know that pro-Chinese arguments which are true that for example with all the oppression and so on but you know when communists took over in '49 or when the average age of how do you call it survival when an average person dies what's I think around now it's in Tibet you know so but it's a complex question so again with rootedness you know what I like about European Union that the stronger European Union that's why all the right-wingers are against it now not only did not strengthen local oppression but open up the space for more local for example I claim that in Spain Basque country and Catalonia even here in the UK although you are now out Wales Scotland and so on even in France some part all this was exactly opened by the fact that nations do not feel we are just our own none of them is saying we want out of Europe but just we have a larger unity Europe where we can afford for this very reason more local communal life maybe I'm a utopian here but I have high religious take this with irony but it's true what I will tell you I met a couple of times and it's very strange how we have good personal relations Rowan Williams the ex the only really intelligent Archbishop now it's incredible how my guys at Bloomsbury told me he just delivered a manuscript very leftist one on solidarity solidarity today okay so he immediately admits this he's totally for Europe against Brexit he says that precisely European the idea of European unity as a global encompassing unity guaranteeing certain basic rights it's what gave a boost to them it's not just Scotland and so on he is very much in how do you make a predicate people who live in Wales are what Welsh Welsh okay for the Welsh people and he even gave me some wonderful indications Rowan Williams he told me if you listen to people speaking Welsh you will immediately notice something if there is some here you can confirm it or deny it but I liked as a theory his his point was that those who speak Welsh lack really dirty words in their own language so you don't understand anything only every minute or so fuck off jerk yourself or whatever you know and I said this is a wonderful example of multicultural cooperation and so on so you see that would be my answer and it makes me infinitely sad that Belgium would have fitted into this ideally because stronger Europe opens up a space for local differences you know no I never use dirty words in Dutch but do you have them I have them but the people who use them uh so which do you use English ones English here inside jokes yeah I always said when people English universal language yes at the level of dirty words you know French why you say but French are not so good are they don't know no the highest are two examples Serbs Serbia and Southern part of China I was told is it true or not that if you go inside from Hong Kong they have very no but true but no sorry seriously what I want to say is that uh because we Slovenes are totally crippled at this level we it's impossible in our language to translate even this big hard-boiled novel list like Raymond Chandler he is not directly vulgar but this tough language it doesn't have an equivalent in Slovene which is a cultural tragedy but I'm losing time okay let's go on my god please please please do we move to China or there is a guy up there fuck off to China we'll come back to you back to you how do you see I basically agree with your description of the the current trend that how does this change the notion of revolutionary movement versus alternate modernity or are we instead given the context of what you just about that's a very precise question and I will not bluff I am still perplexed by it I first I hope we all agree that we shouldn't do with Trumpianism what people on the right and on the left like to do today with old fascism or Stalinism to renormalize people are telling me don't react so nervously coldly analyze it in some sense we have to retain this sense of shock it's horrible what is happening but my answer would have been is that unfortunately it's it presents itself as counter-revolution in the sense that revolution is LGBT+ woke culture whatever and we want but in its effects it's incredibly revolutionary and here we don't have time to go in detail into it but here I would even say it I would even conditionally totally agree with Varoufakis that while we talk about changing capitalism or even overcoming it they are doing it if this tendency in the United States goes on it will no longer be a liberal democratic state not just at the level of politics who knows what is happening now or in a
they did it although I think that Peron was generally bad it was a form of fascism but they did it so again let's go on so that I don't get lost my idea is that we have this superposition of options and it's not clear today we cannot count on some deeper historical necessity like even non-deterministic Marxists like to say if we don't screw it up there will be socialism and they concede we may screw it up and so on but no it's really open I would even say following Benjamin who said that you know our duty today is to pull the emergency brake on the train of history not to make it go on faster I even think that if left to itself history moves to a new form of maybe soft fascism or neo-feudalism or however we call it only our voluntary action can can prevent this what I mean by this now let me be very precise the last theoretical detour is not that everything is contingent but the motive that I repeat all the time in a contingent way one of these possibilities will establish it as a winning one and then the whole history will be perceived as necessary leading to this contingency I'm now if you permit me two three minutes of let's nonetheless play serious philosophy of Hegel Hegel is not as very intelligent readers like my two good friends I got their new substantial text Rebecca Comay and she makes me angry which means I really appreciate her you know why because it's hard for me as an old male chauvinist to admit this but in the last years almost all great books on Hegel were written by women I'm sorry it's first Jillian Rose Hegel contra sociology then then it was sorry Catherine Malabou but between the two is Beatrice Longuenesse yes and others Rebecca Comay then there is this Rocio Zambrano from Puerto Rico who now teaches all around the United States and Rebecca Comay and she and Frank Ruda who is now the victim of this new Stalinist purge in the Western academia you know is as I've already mentioned it here I think this is not a joke she lost he lost his job at Dundee University it was even the BBC News not him but the radical reduction done typically by Labour worse than Conservatives so you know what's my joke here double joke I know I used it here but I love it it's so obscene that in United Kingdom you no longer have a left some Margaret Thatcher you have one big ruling moderate right party it's called Labour party and then you have some crazy even more rightist party now comes don't be mad at me it will sound racist but I don't mean it how do you then distinguish between moderate centrist right and radical right where in radical right you find more women and Indians and others if you want moderate right you get white men mostly okay with honorable exception of your how do you call it the guy who does the budget Rachel something yeah but but nonetheless don't underestimate this phenomena you know this rediscovery of women's and other racist other races in the extreme right don't say oh they are just cheating this is a trick sorry it's more than a trick but let's go on so my point is that whichever version will win it will change not only the future but the past also I refer here to my eternally quoted line from T.S. Eliot who said that a really new work of art rewrites changes the entire past and I always remember him do you know why when you walk here by past towards Russell Square by passing SOAS you know that the first building on the left was Faber and Faber where now they moved somewhere else where Eliot was working he did his great work there around the corner okay so what I'm saying is that it's crucial to see and Hegel knew this you have a Hegelian passage from a deadlock a critical situation then something new emerges and resolves the crisis usual interpreters of Hegel read this as Hegel's great limitation there are no radical cuts in Hegel in Hegel everything flows logically from one category to the other no I think Hegel's logic is much more delicate if you read him closely you have an antagonism a tension then something new emerges and the passage appears logical but only retroactively there is always in so-called dialectical synthesis an act of contingency of cut yes there is continuity but retroactive continuity I don't have time I'm losing too much but so just to conclude so here I have a problem also with regard to the test against me and I appreciate it I mean critical text you know where I as I already mentioned yesterday would like to hear more from you again as I've written a couple of times I'm afraid of the intellectual laziness of the left what do I mean by this obviously something horrible is happening today with Trump and others no not just with Trump and the easiest way is to say oh it's horrible so what the most horrible thing that we remember fascism Nazism so it must be fascism maybe it is but tell me more in what precise way it's not just it's literally a liberal fascism we can debate this but just to conclude back to China it was you I think who mentioned yesterday this opposition between take-over and what was the other point assimilation yes here things get complex for me I will again repeat a crucial insight for me from Fred Jameson of it happen China Chinese history much earlier in 13th century and when they were open when they were occupied or whatever by Mongols no wasn't this an example of assimilation but not of the occupied to the occupier that's what I almost the other way around which was good for the China yes they occupied China but gradually they assimilated more they didn't ruin Chinese culture you know who told me this correct me if I'm wrong I spoke with a Chinese friend and he told me something wonderful maybe it was a myth correct me if I'm wrong but I liked what I heard it's that in China even today if you want to say some street in a big city is safe you use an expression like it's as if it's controlled by the Mongols or whatever you know it's a myth probably I know how many images are here I know that for example all Western intellectuals me included quoted that phrase allegedly from China that the greatest curse is may you live in interesting times which what my Chinese friends maybe you can correct me are telling me never heard of this this is Western invention on China so what I'm saying is that you know what often can happen is that it's not just a assimilation versus takeover what I would be afraid is that maybe even Deng Xiaoping and others they thought it's just a takeover but gradually it turns into assimilation you know what I'm saying here what my enemy and this should now bring me back more to what you said yesterday my enemy here is the notion of alternate modernities Fred Jameson whom I follow here and as I already said here or didn't I when I don't know when I was here I'm he was really my good friend you know why I wrote that text which was cheating I just went into my PC and said Fred Jameson and just pull out all the fragments on him you know and wrote a very popular text but how he died I was contacting him the last days you know in France I've written this in my text they have this wonderful expression a series of jokes called Monsieur de la Palisse about Monsieur de la Palisse a name a complete idiot who takes things literally and you have a whole series of these totally flat wisdoms which are in some sense true but they are stupid like the best known is one minute before he died Monsieur de la Palisse was still alive of course you know my favorite is do you have the same expression in English in Slovene we have it somebody if somebody if you are too self-enclosed no somebody tells you go round and do you use this expression we do and Germans do I think go around and throw your eyes around a little bit because you know this Monsieur de la Palisse is alone can't get a woman and mother tells him go to the town fair there and throw your eyes around a little bit you will find some woman to approach and then he comes in the evening back home sad mother said what was wrong he said well I did as you told me I went to a butcher I bought some pigs and cows eyes and I went there and was throwing them around and nothing you know okay Fred Jameson was my Monsieur de la Palisse of the first joke you know that he behaved as if okay I had a heart attack blah blah but let's go on as if nothing happened his family told me one day he was already in hospital the last message a couple of hours before he died his message was I need tomorrow he already had his PC there these books that manuscript and so on he literally behaved as if like one day before Fred Jameson died he was still alive it was absolutely incredible you know and so in his critique of alternate modernity he made a nice point that this was a popular Third World or not just Third World in the sense of undeveloped part but non-Western liberal dream that we can we can do our own non-capitalist modernity the idea was again what I was improvising yesterday about Bang-on-un we can do our own dynamic development but avoiding capitalist antagonisms no and be even more efficient in this way Fred Jameson says that no these attempts are ultimately attempts to have capitalism without its antagonisms it's basic and he was right when the last time I met we talked about this he agreed with me when I said sorry guys in Europe we already tried alternate modernity in 20th century it was called fascism fascism the best definition of fascism is it's an alternate modernity so in this sense although you do something new it's not liberal capitalism the way we know it you think you are taking it over but the capitalist logic determines you you know you think you are the boss but the logic determines you I'm sorry if I did my usual thing didn't I say five ten minutes that I will just no okay that's my contribution with Derrida once we were not totally personal enemies I used this because I was speaking too long and he looked at me angrily and I said listen I'm following your line I'm fighting against the linear metaphysical notion of time you know like in my time five minutes is one hour no that's life so please I can go on but I would really like you now to counter-attack in whatever sense you want I can go on if it doesn't work you I don't want to be the one who chooses go on not me there Elia is there yeah yeah so you want to go to questions now is that what you said yeah because I think there were so many interesting things together sorry that we dealt with is he not here for example the most profound Marxist insight into the link between chocolates and pedophilia in Belgium and so on is the guy here no ah you are here yeah yeah sorry you didn't ah because I know why but you did the right ah you have a chocolate for him yeah yeah no because maybe the mistake was like I'm not a child but your head would scare children off you know now you have better chances sorry would he want yeah please so yeah it's the left potentially appropriating rootedness I said appropriate rootedness yeah rooted rootedness yeah yeah yeah yeah I think I know you're for global cooperation so um but how to yeah how to how to how to resolve this being citizen of the world or being citizen of a particular place um yeah that's that's one that's one question um yeah okay okay very brief answer because I don't want to repeat the mistake of you and of my yesterday answer too long you know what's my hope here and that's the point of that text the enemy is for me more and more the worst of European tradition that survives today the idea of a strong nation-state and that's what makes me sad about India Turkey and so on with all their critique of Eurocentrism and so on they are practicing precisely the worst thing from European legacy you know what Modi is doing strong nation-state which means pressure on Muslims and so on Erdogan now that it's horrible there is a historic chance that Kurds offered to dissolve their whatever was PKK resistance organization no Erdogan's answer is almost the same and Putin when Ukraine said okay okay take everything you want no Erdogan wants more and maybe I'm wrong you should but sometimes I get the impression that even China has some tendencies towards a strong Han-dominated state you should tell me how do you look upon this I am afraid here to be the victim of Western filtered media how is what is in your eyes the real actual situation with what we read in the Western media which is uh Tibet and Uyghurs there in that Muslim part is there oppression is there a I know what China has done I know that pro-Chinese arguments which are true that for example with all the oppression and so on but you know when communists took over in '49 or when the average age of how do you call it survival when an average person dies what's I think around now it's in Tibet you know so but it's a complex question so again with rootedness you know what I like about European Union that the stronger European Union that's why all the right-wingers are against it now not only did not strengthen local oppression but open up the space for more local for example I claim that in Spain Basque country and Catalonia even here in the UK although you are now out Wales Scotland and so on even in France some part all this was exactly opened by the fact that nations do not feel we are just our own none of them is saying we want out of Europe but just we have a larger unity Europe where we can afford for this very reason more local communal life maybe I'm a utopian here but I have high religious take this with irony but it's true what I will tell you I met a couple of times and it's very strange how we have good personal relations Rowan Williams the ex the only really intelligent Archbishop now it's incredible how my guys at Bloomsbury told me he just delivered a manuscript very leftist one on solidarity solidarity today okay so he immediately admits this he's totally for Europe against Brexit he says that precisely European the idea of European unity as a global encompassing unity guaranteeing certain basic rights it's what gave a boost to them it's not just Scotland and so on he is very much in how do you make a predicate people who live in Wales are what Welsh Welsh okay for the Welsh people and he even gave me some wonderful indications Rowan Williams he told me if you listen to people speaking Welsh you will immediately notice something if there is some here you can confirm it or deny it but I liked as a theory his his point was that those who speak Welsh lack really dirty words in their own language so you don't understand anything only every minute or so fuck off jerk yourself or whatever you know and I said this is a wonderful example of multicultural cooperation and so on so you see that would be my answer and it makes me infinitely sad that Belgium would have fitted into this ideally because stronger Europe opens up a space for local differences you know no I never use dirty words in Dutch but do you have them I have them but the people who use them uh so which do you use English ones English here inside jokes yeah I always said when people English universal language yes at the level of dirty words you know French why you say but French are not so good are they don't know no the highest are two examples Serbs Serbia and Southern part of China I was told is it true or not that if you go inside from Hong Kong they have very no but true but no sorry seriously what I want to say is that uh because we Slovenes are totally crippled at this level we it's impossible in our language to translate even this big hard-boiled novel list like Raymond Chandler he is not directly vulgar but this tough language it doesn't have an equivalent in Slovene which is a cultural tragedy but I'm losing time okay let's go on my god please please please do we move to China or there is a guy up there fuck off to China we'll come back to you back to you how do you see I basically agree with your description of the the current trend that how does this change the notion of revolutionary movement versus alternate modernity or are we instead given the context of what you just about that's a very precise question and I will not bluff I am still perplexed by it I first I hope we all agree that we shouldn't do with Trumpianism what people on the right and on the left like to do today with old fascism or Stalinism to renormalize people are telling me don't react so nervously coldly analyze it in some sense we have to retain this sense of shock it's horrible what is happening but my answer would have been is that unfortunately it's it presents itself as counter-revolution in the sense that revolution is LGBT+ woke culture whatever and we want but in its effects it's incredibly revolutionary and here we don't have time to go in detail into it but here I would even say it I would even conditionally totally agree with Varoufakis that while we talk about changing capitalism or even overcoming it they are doing it if this tendency in the United States goes on it will no longer be a liberal democratic state not just at the level of politics who knows what is happening now or in a
unknown
couple
couple
Slavoj Žižek
of hours you get this madness you know liberation day with these tariffs but I think it's deeper you know again it's more complex but definitely as I said yesterday figures like Elon Musk and so on they are no longer old capitalists even not the ultra rich because on
of hours you get this madness you know liberation day with these tariffs but I think it's deeper you know again it's more complex but definitely as I said yesterday figures like Elon Musk and so on they are no longer old capitalists even not the ultra rich because on
unknown
the
the
unknown
other hand we
other hand we
Slavoj Žižek
shouldn't underestimate the injustices in the old capitalism for example I read somewhere that take those from the end of the 19th century this wave of mega rich people who were they we all know their from from Carnegie all of them oh yeah and the Rockefellers yeah yeah you know if you adjust to inflation what they had they were richer than Elon Musk they were already almost a trillion again if you inflation adjust it not to mention if you measure their position of wealth within the entire country
shouldn't underestimate the injustices in the old capitalism for example I read somewhere that take those from the end of the 19th century this wave of mega rich people who were they we all know their from from Carnegie all of them oh yeah and the Rockefellers yeah yeah you know if you adjust to inflation what they had they were richer than Elon Musk they were already almost a trillion again if you inflation adjust it not to mention if you measure their position of wealth within the entire country
unknown
but nonetheless so I think
but nonetheless so I think
Slavoj Žižek
that unfortunately okay it all depends how you define revolution but I'm tempted to say I'm not yet decided here you know
that unfortunately okay it all depends how you define revolution but I'm tempted to say I'm not yet decided here you know
unknown
it's too easy
it's too easy
Slavoj Žižek
to say that oh but it's still old capitalism it is
to say that oh but it's still old capitalism it is
unknown
capitalism but it's not old capitalism something is so radically
capitalism but it's not old capitalism something is so radically
Slavoj Žižek
changing in the way the state functions more and more direct control in in the way capitalists working while they are talking about the getting rid of the pressure of the state you know when when Musk came on stage with that how do you call it chain to cut the wood no taken yeah taken from Milei from the Argentinian guy get rid of the state and so on and so on yes but I hope you notice that if anything the state is getting stronger than ever now in the United States it's regulating practically everything and so on so I think I cannot do now whole analysis but I'm afraid of this secret satisfaction oh it's still old capitalism no the way this new tendency mobilizes also a large part of the working class along the racist lines and so on even I would say much more successfully than Nazism or fascism did because as we know today I read some data you know it's of course it's not true as orthodox Marxists thought that Nazism was a direct rule of big banks and so on but it was also not that the working class was opposed if you look at the class basis not in any deeper sense but those who mostly supported Nazism it was the middle classes no who felt threatened by the economic crisis and so on and the rich people even protested a lot so what I'm saying again is that maybe we should redefine in a more precise way revolution because it's not of course revolution in the sense of simply let's get out of capitalist mode of production but capitalism will change nature so radically that again we are all searching for the term but I think again it's too comfortable to say capitalism to say it's just a new phase of capitalism that's what I think but as you can see from the slightly elusive nature of my answer I'm not sure I see my limits would you also say it's not like you wouldn't agree with Varoufakis and Judith in that it's a new form of feudalism is it again I I see their point very clearly but for me you know where is the problem for me the whole point of feudalism is that you are also directly at the subjective level dominated in feudalism if you are how do you call ordinary farmer a serf a serf a serf this is your symbolic position you are a serf you know your proper place this is not how Trumpianism functions a typical form of Trumpian economy will be this one and you also find thought in this direction with Varoufakis I think the ideal form is this how do you call it not permanently employed but unemployable no no no this when you precarious precarious yes the idea you know why is this as I've written sorry for boring you precarious work is for me an absolutely ideal form of this new stage that we are entering why because its basic ideology is this one first it enables us to us the system hope not us to rise above this clearly profiled class struggle if you ask Microsoft or for example Airbnb or how are these top Uber no they say wait a minute we don't exploit you we are not even capitalists we just mediate between what you offer and your public customers you are that was that is a nice perversion the idea is you own your own car you are a small capitalist and we just enable contact between you and your customers we have nothing to do with traditional capitalism why is this so dangerous A because it's a nice example it's a crucial example of the mystification of freedom today the ideology behind it is this one uh you own your own means of production and you are free to do with your money whatever you want I think I used this example yesterday like you have ten thousand dollars okay you act like a small capitalist you can say I will take a holiday I will I will I will invest in my son's education or whatever blah blah like it makes you much more free that's the mythology second thing that I find absolutely ingenious but it horrifies me is that let's say you work for Uber or other examples are even clearer you don't perceive the company as the enemy they are just above neutral you perceive your class companions other Uber drivers as competitors so it absolutely already in its form prevents any sorry for this old-fashioned term working class unity first there is by definition so they claim no working class we all own mostly our means of production no and second part we perceive others as as our as our
changing in the way the state functions more and more direct control in in the way capitalists working while they are talking about the getting rid of the pressure of the state you know when when Musk came on stage with that how do you call it chain to cut the wood no taken yeah taken from Milei from the Argentinian guy get rid of the state and so on and so on yes but I hope you notice that if anything the state is getting stronger than ever now in the United States it's regulating practically everything and so on so I think I cannot do now whole analysis but I'm afraid of this secret satisfaction oh it's still old capitalism no the way this new tendency mobilizes also a large part of the working class along the racist lines and so on even I would say much more successfully than Nazism or fascism did because as we know today I read some data you know it's of course it's not true as orthodox Marxists thought that Nazism was a direct rule of big banks and so on but it was also not that the working class was opposed if you look at the class basis not in any deeper sense but those who mostly supported Nazism it was the middle classes no who felt threatened by the economic crisis and so on and the rich people even protested a lot so what I'm saying again is that maybe we should redefine in a more precise way revolution because it's not of course revolution in the sense of simply let's get out of capitalist mode of production but capitalism will change nature so radically that again we are all searching for the term but I think again it's too comfortable to say capitalism to say it's just a new phase of capitalism that's what I think but as you can see from the slightly elusive nature of my answer I'm not sure I see my limits would you also say it's not like you wouldn't agree with Varoufakis and Judith in that it's a new form of feudalism is it again I I see their point very clearly but for me you know where is the problem for me the whole point of feudalism is that you are also directly at the subjective level dominated in feudalism if you are how do you call ordinary farmer a serf a serf a serf this is your symbolic position you are a serf you know your proper place this is not how Trumpianism functions a typical form of Trumpian economy will be this one and you also find thought in this direction with Varoufakis I think the ideal form is this how do you call it not permanently employed but unemployable no no no this when you precarious precarious yes the idea you know why is this as I've written sorry for boring you precarious work is for me an absolutely ideal form of this new stage that we are entering why because its basic ideology is this one first it enables us to us the system hope not us to rise above this clearly profiled class struggle if you ask Microsoft or for example Airbnb or how are these top Uber no they say wait a minute we don't exploit you we are not even capitalists we just mediate between what you offer and your public customers you are that was that is a nice perversion the idea is you own your own car you are a small capitalist and we just enable contact between you and your customers we have nothing to do with traditional capitalism why is this so dangerous A because it's a nice example it's a crucial example of the mystification of freedom today the ideology behind it is this one uh you own your own means of production and you are free to do with your money whatever you want I think I used this example yesterday like you have ten thousand dollars okay you act like a small capitalist you can say I will take a holiday I will I will I will invest in my son's education or whatever blah blah like it makes you much more free that's the mythology second thing that I find absolutely ingenious but it horrifies me is that let's say you work for Uber or other examples are even clearer you don't perceive the company as the enemy they are just above neutral you perceive your class companions other Uber drivers as competitors so it absolutely already in its form prevents any sorry for this old-fashioned term working class unity first there is by definition so they claim no working class we all own mostly our means of production no and second part we perceive others as as our as our
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competitors
competitors
Slavoj Žižek
so this I think
so this I think
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is something that simply doesn't
is something that simply doesn't
Slavoj Žižek
fit some features that I I wonder if you agree perceive as crucial to the notion of feudalism what feudalism means is nonetheless a basic well-organized hierarchic order where it's clearly defined how everybody is at his her their proper place with very limited freedom for example even uh even artisans those who produce things are usually organized into groups where they limit the number of how many of them can enter and it's interesting how if there is some Italian here you may confirm it when I was recently in Rome and complained how inefficient and expensive taxis are there they told me yes because it's organized literally in the old feudal way there is a limited number of taxis taxi drivers are organized in what's the term I have it here it's not a cast it is a guild sorry guild guild yeah kind of a guild and you know what's the paradox that if you are an old taxi driver and want to retire you can sell your license to another and I was told that the price can not always reach up to euros no just to get the title this is feudal logic but I don't think this is predominant I think that at this level Trumpianism is much more wild but if
fit some features that I I wonder if you agree perceive as crucial to the notion of feudalism what feudalism means is nonetheless a basic well-organized hierarchic order where it's clearly defined how everybody is at his her their proper place with very limited freedom for example even uh even artisans those who produce things are usually organized into groups where they limit the number of how many of them can enter and it's interesting how if there is some Italian here you may confirm it when I was recently in Rome and complained how inefficient and expensive taxis are there they told me yes because it's organized literally in the old feudal way there is a limited number of taxis taxi drivers are organized in what's the term I have it here it's not a cast it is a guild sorry guild guild yeah kind of a guild and you know what's the paradox that if you are an old taxi driver and want to retire you can sell your license to another and I was told that the price can not always reach up to euros no just to get the title this is feudal logic but I don't think this is predominant I think that at this level Trumpianism is much more wild but if
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk
Slavoj Žižek
developed his neuralink then it then it first he is bluffing a lot you know yeah I mean my answer to his dreams go on to go on Mars it's maybe that's a good idea try and disappear there please there was one at the back oh I'm sorry up yeah earlier sorry on earlier point i yeah so thank you for the presentation I can start with both oh this means you already sharpening your knife behind your back okay use it yeah so my question is the moderate rightist for white men and the radical right is for women and Asians and you said don't discount the latter it's more than a trick and I wondered if you could elaborate on that point a bit more because I found it quite intriguing mmm it's more than one element here one is that you know the the traditional the the new radical right is very plastic plastic in the sense that it's ready to make quite a many uh compromises for example maybe I mentioned this this was one of the secrets of Margaret Thatcher's success you know Labour party thought okay Indians other race subordinated they will be ours no Margaret Thatcher read the statistics which tell tell that already in her years an average Indian family person was already slightly more wealthy than an average white British person that's the one thing it's no longer automatic second so uh second thing it's an old it's not simply cheating in the sense that it's more I think not simply cheating but a very effective ideological mechanism no matter how subordinated a group is you always have exceptions people who succeeded so and it's very intelligent to pick them up because precisely because they are outsiders they can do better the job than direct representatives of today's rich and so on you know this trick was nicely described already by Marx when he explained how it was wise for the British state system in early modernity with the development of capitalism to keep it's no longer true but to keep political power in the hands of aristocracy because they claim if you give the power directly to capitalists they have conflicting interests you know they will get in trouble while aristocracy doesn't work for their life they are outside and they may be precisely a better manager of it now you will say this is aristocracy ah no in the years of welfare state intelligent capitalists knew that precisely because directly conservative pro-capitalist parties are usually fighting other competitors the best to paraphrase Marx the best representative of the general interest of capitalism can be social democracy of course social democracy in this Western sense and so on and so on so what I'm saying is that you know take somebody like how do you pronounce it I'm afraid to mis Kemi Badenoch who I was thinking because she was actually a student here really yes I'm embarrassed to say she did law although I never taught her but yeah she did law here about should have taught her I wish I had but uh maybe she no but what I want to say is that precisely because she has this minimal social position of externality not and I'm talking here about being something eccentric and so on no she is at a distance and this may work better than to have one of the old stupid conservatives there is something in this logic that it's better even for example correct me if I'm wrong in China it's totally different but who unified China the first emperor yeah the yeah but where does he come from not the big provinces in from half desert inside outside a little bit no it's he who you know unification has to come from from the outside and here I got in conflict with Wang Hui and my friends because they all want to remain leftist Confucians I follow Mao here I I think that you know what he did people say the first emperor of China was terrorist fuck you look at the statistic he was not he the only thing he did is that he liquidated many rich people he applied the same laws to all of them but let's not lose time so in this sense it's important not to dismiss this as cheating when Kemi Badenoch is on the top this doesn't mean some secret ultra conservative bureau or whatever meeting picked her up to to cheat and so on no this is a very good survival strategy and again it works a little bit like for for what they call in the United States I'm now jumping it's not the same phenomenon the corporate MeToo you know you have a corporation which exploits workers like crazy and so on then some of the corporation are already doing it in a planned
developed his neuralink then it then it first he is bluffing a lot you know yeah I mean my answer to his dreams go on to go on Mars it's maybe that's a good idea try and disappear there please there was one at the back oh I'm sorry up yeah earlier sorry on earlier point i yeah so thank you for the presentation I can start with both oh this means you already sharpening your knife behind your back okay use it yeah so my question is the moderate rightist for white men and the radical right is for women and Asians and you said don't discount the latter it's more than a trick and I wondered if you could elaborate on that point a bit more because I found it quite intriguing mmm it's more than one element here one is that you know the the traditional the the new radical right is very plastic plastic in the sense that it's ready to make quite a many uh compromises for example maybe I mentioned this this was one of the secrets of Margaret Thatcher's success you know Labour party thought okay Indians other race subordinated they will be ours no Margaret Thatcher read the statistics which tell tell that already in her years an average Indian family person was already slightly more wealthy than an average white British person that's the one thing it's no longer automatic second so uh second thing it's an old it's not simply cheating in the sense that it's more I think not simply cheating but a very effective ideological mechanism no matter how subordinated a group is you always have exceptions people who succeeded so and it's very intelligent to pick them up because precisely because they are outsiders they can do better the job than direct representatives of today's rich and so on you know this trick was nicely described already by Marx when he explained how it was wise for the British state system in early modernity with the development of capitalism to keep it's no longer true but to keep political power in the hands of aristocracy because they claim if you give the power directly to capitalists they have conflicting interests you know they will get in trouble while aristocracy doesn't work for their life they are outside and they may be precisely a better manager of it now you will say this is aristocracy ah no in the years of welfare state intelligent capitalists knew that precisely because directly conservative pro-capitalist parties are usually fighting other competitors the best to paraphrase Marx the best representative of the general interest of capitalism can be social democracy of course social democracy in this Western sense and so on and so on so what I'm saying is that you know take somebody like how do you pronounce it I'm afraid to mis Kemi Badenoch who I was thinking because she was actually a student here really yes I'm embarrassed to say she did law although I never taught her but yeah she did law here about should have taught her I wish I had but uh maybe she no but what I want to say is that precisely because she has this minimal social position of externality not and I'm talking here about being something eccentric and so on no she is at a distance and this may work better than to have one of the old stupid conservatives there is something in this logic that it's better even for example correct me if I'm wrong in China it's totally different but who unified China the first emperor yeah the yeah but where does he come from not the big provinces in from half desert inside outside a little bit no it's he who you know unification has to come from from the outside and here I got in conflict with Wang Hui and my friends because they all want to remain leftist Confucians I follow Mao here I I think that you know what he did people say the first emperor of China was terrorist fuck you look at the statistic he was not he the only thing he did is that he liquidated many rich people he applied the same laws to all of them but let's not lose time so in this sense it's important not to dismiss this as cheating when Kemi Badenoch is on the top this doesn't mean some secret ultra conservative bureau or whatever meeting picked her up to to cheat and so on no this is a very good survival strategy and again it works a little bit like for for what they call in the United States I'm now jumping it's not the same phenomenon the corporate MeToo you know you have a corporation which exploits workers like crazy and so on then some of the corporation are already doing it in a planned
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way you look for one of your top guys who I don't know grab a secretary's ass on earth so on I don't condone that I'm not saying it's minimal but then with all public pomp you
way you look for one of your top guys who I don't know grab a secretary's ass on earth so on I don't condone that I'm not saying it's minimal but then with all public pomp you
Slavoj Žižek
sacrifice him and what the same exploitation goes on just you regain the mark of you know so again don't I would like just to finish to link this with what I think I said yesterday that it's not a problem today to have a leader like Kemi Badenoch and so on the because again the system is no longer at least not in the standard sense patriarchal our leaders today are still dirty authorities but they are not father figures be serious Musk Trump they if they are father figures they are I put this hypothesis at some point you know Freud talks about in his Totem and Taboo about this primordial father not yet killed by
sacrifice him and what the same exploitation goes on just you regain the mark of you know so again don't I would like just to finish to link this with what I think I said yesterday that it's not a problem today to have a leader like Kemi Badenoch and so on the because again the system is no longer at least not in the standard sense patriarchal our leaders today are still dirty authorities but they are not father figures be serious Musk Trump they if they are father figures they are I put this hypothesis at some point you know Freud talks about in his Totem and Taboo about this primordial father not yet killed by
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the
the
Slavoj Žižek
sons who fucks all the women around and then sons kill him father returns as a symbolic authority you have the rule of law but Lacan makes here a very intelligent remarks that what Freud thought it's the primordial father it's something that comes after symbolic father when the symbolic father's authority is in a crisis you get obscene figures like Trump like Trump and so on so I think that there is an effective crisis in the structure of authority going on today my friend Mladen Dolar who also I must advise you to read his book on Rumors published another book is it in English I even don't know I know it in Slovene on on authority where if his starting point it's a wonderful one it's how no matter how far you go authority was always perceived as something already in crisis you know like for Plato authority is in crisis and so on always so that authority is by definition authority in crisis and following this line or preceding it Fred Jameson gave a wonderful reading of Antigone where he said that what happens in Antigone it's not a decay of the harmonious polis but its constitution because what Antigone is if you read it in a traditional way is the story of a gap between it's a very superficial reading I disagree with between private family values and the state law but this gap defines the state before this gap you have primitive tribal society and so on you know so so I don't even think that it would be interesting maybe you could help me here how does a figure like Kemi Badenoch function I don't think there are any because if anything holds is that black people are not stupid and I'm not saying this in any patronizing way I mean it quite seriously like when I'm in United States and speak vulgar you know who is always worried white liberals they say but when you speak like this how can you be sure that the back black people who are here will not be hurt and so on and finally a black friend of mine exploded at the meeting and said sorry do you think that we are so stupid that we need your protection your statement is racist because you treat us as naive vulnerable people when we will be hurt be sure that we will this is why also one guy totally missed my point he was an honest critic of me who when I with some tasteless examples I know mentioned the story which really happened I had a wonderful obscene exchange with a black friend not to embarrass him I will not name him but he is well-known and he embraced me and said laughed now you can call me a nigger sorry for pronouncing this name then when I quoted this a black critic I appreciate him but got it wrong when he said oh so do you really mean that you can be only really friend with blacks if you call them the N-word no I said arrogantly maybe read my theory of course that guy didn't mean you could really call me N he would be totally right if I were really to call him N I don't know to beat me up to slap me or whatever this was a pure rhetorical offer to be rejected it was just its meaning was simply we are really friends now but it was you know in the same way that sorry for extreme vulgarities when in everyday you said I would like to strangle you now to fuck you up your sorry for big vulgarities it's not meant literally
sons who fucks all the women around and then sons kill him father returns as a symbolic authority you have the rule of law but Lacan makes here a very intelligent remarks that what Freud thought it's the primordial father it's something that comes after symbolic father when the symbolic father's authority is in a crisis you get obscene figures like Trump like Trump and so on so I think that there is an effective crisis in the structure of authority going on today my friend Mladen Dolar who also I must advise you to read his book on Rumors published another book is it in English I even don't know I know it in Slovene on on authority where if his starting point it's a wonderful one it's how no matter how far you go authority was always perceived as something already in crisis you know like for Plato authority is in crisis and so on always so that authority is by definition authority in crisis and following this line or preceding it Fred Jameson gave a wonderful reading of Antigone where he said that what happens in Antigone it's not a decay of the harmonious polis but its constitution because what Antigone is if you read it in a traditional way is the story of a gap between it's a very superficial reading I disagree with between private family values and the state law but this gap defines the state before this gap you have primitive tribal society and so on you know so so I don't even think that it would be interesting maybe you could help me here how does a figure like Kemi Badenoch function I don't think there are any because if anything holds is that black people are not stupid and I'm not saying this in any patronizing way I mean it quite seriously like when I'm in United States and speak vulgar you know who is always worried white liberals they say but when you speak like this how can you be sure that the back black people who are here will not be hurt and so on and finally a black friend of mine exploded at the meeting and said sorry do you think that we are so stupid that we need your protection your statement is racist because you treat us as naive vulnerable people when we will be hurt be sure that we will this is why also one guy totally missed my point he was an honest critic of me who when I with some tasteless examples I know mentioned the story which really happened I had a wonderful obscene exchange with a black friend not to embarrass him I will not name him but he is well-known and he embraced me and said laughed now you can call me a nigger sorry for pronouncing this name then when I quoted this a black critic I appreciate him but got it wrong when he said oh so do you really mean that you can be only really friend with blacks if you call them the N-word no I said arrogantly maybe read my theory of course that guy didn't mean you could really call me N he would be totally right if I were really to call him N I don't know to beat me up to slap me or whatever this was a pure rhetorical offer to be rejected it was just its meaning was simply we are really friends now but it was you know in the same way that sorry for extreme vulgarities when in everyday you said I would like to strangle you now to fuck you up your sorry for big vulgarities it's not meant literally
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this is
this is
Slavoj Žižek
how everyday language works you have these expressions you know which are function precisely by not being make to to be taken literally and the definition of an idiot is to make them to take them literally and I make sorry to go on for so long once not here in New York maybe you know the story I'm sorry to repeat it but I like it so much a guy approached me white [unintelligible] and said professor I love your obscene jokes could you please write me a dedication to your book and sign it but do it really obscene I warned
how everyday language works you have these expressions you know which are function precisely by not being make to to be taken literally and the definition of an idiot is to make them to take them literally and I make sorry to go on for so long once not here in New York maybe you know the story I'm sorry to repeat it but I like it so much a guy approached me white [unintelligible] and said professor I love your obscene jokes could you please write me a dedication to your book and sign it but do it really obscene I warned
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him I told him you are playing
him I told him you are playing
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with the devil I'm an idiot I take things literally if you mean obscene you will get it obscene no no no as dirty as you want then he was hurt of course because
with the devil I'm an idiot I take things literally if you mean obscene you will get it obscene no no no as dirty as you want then he was hurt of course because
Slavoj Žižek
you know what I wrote in a dirty toilets with her feet in urine I'm fucking up your ass standing your mother and so on and then he was hurt and I was so furious I told him I warned you two times you are talking to a madman you know no no no but you so again but would you agree also you know what interests me more than this the true problem of feminism for me is not symbolic posts occupied by women but women again small humiliations subordinations in everyday life and how even apparent privileges of women can be incorporated into it like this is part of the British mythology you know all those movies how green was my valley where miners family her husband the sons come home on because they were paid weekly then on Saturday early afternoon they come home and she has some cap whatever open and they all throw the money in the idea is yeah yeah husband brings the money but the wife determines how it will be this is for me also false freedom of women it's one okay it's better than nothing it's better than what happens often in Slovenia that's why we are even now that's why we are a country of alcoholics literally over of the people are clinically alcoholic I'm clear here I no no no not for morality I'm unnatural I hate the taste of alcohol I'm sorry unnatural but what I want to say is that where no husband doesn't do this and simply goes to the inn drinks it it's horrible so I just want to complicate things and to warn you about the plasticity let me take another example did you see the movie I didn't like it but one detail is right *Babygirl* Nicole Kidman getting into affair with a young guy you know what I only and get involved in it in a masochist relationship she discovers the satisfaction in him a much younger collaborator although she is the CEO top humiliates her and so on but then there is a wonderful there are wonderful five seconds ten at the end when after they resolve the tension she organized that he is sent to I don't know where Hong Kong Indonesia and blah blah the crisis is over then an old board member comes to her to the office and says ah you got rid of your I simplified the story you got rid of him but I heard you were doing strange things with him implying masochist
you know what I wrote in a dirty toilets with her feet in urine I'm fucking up your ass standing your mother and so on and then he was hurt and I was so furious I told him I warned you two times you are talking to a madman you know no no no but you so again but would you agree also you know what interests me more than this the true problem of feminism for me is not symbolic posts occupied by women but women again small humiliations subordinations in everyday life and how even apparent privileges of women can be incorporated into it like this is part of the British mythology you know all those movies how green was my valley where miners family her husband the sons come home on because they were paid weekly then on Saturday early afternoon they come home and she has some cap whatever open and they all throw the money in the idea is yeah yeah husband brings the money but the wife determines how it will be this is for me also false freedom of women it's one okay it's better than nothing it's better than what happens often in Slovenia that's why we are even now that's why we are a country of alcoholics literally over of the people are clinically alcoholic I'm clear here I no no no not for morality I'm unnatural I hate the taste of alcohol I'm sorry unnatural but what I want to say is that where no husband doesn't do this and simply goes to the inn drinks it it's horrible so I just want to complicate things and to warn you about the plasticity let me take another example did you see the movie I didn't like it but one detail is right *Babygirl* Nicole Kidman getting into affair with a young guy you know what I only and get involved in it in a masochist relationship she discovers the satisfaction in him a much younger collaborator although she is the CEO top humiliates her and so on but then there is a wonderful there are wonderful five seconds ten at the end when after they resolve the tension she organized that he is sent to I don't know where Hong Kong Indonesia and blah blah the crisis is over then an old board member comes to her to the office and says ah you got rid of your I simplified the story you got rid of him but I heard you were doing strange things with him implying masochist
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rituals and then he says listen if you have any of these needs at any point you can come to my place and so on and she gives a perfect answer here she said
rituals and then he says listen if you have any of these needs at any point you can come to my place and so on and she gives a perfect answer here she said
Slavoj Žižek
how dare you talk like this when I will like to be humiliated and beaten I will organize it and pay for it you know it's absolutely correct answer it's one of the few examples where I would have done the same if I were to be a masochist I would prefer to pay somebody because in this way you depersonalize it to some extent no money also has sorry forgetting this talk yeah China attacking okay please finally yeah where are we ah okay yeah essentially as the cultural revolution is very brilliantly and successfully presented as not being sufficient to sustain the cultural revolution is described as a graceful and successful lesson on necessity to sustain no but so they didn't so they didn't put it into that of no no it's just it was a success yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah things basically communism has to be integrated into economy it appears very intricate and complex so responding to your comments on Deng Xiaoping so basically what Xiaoping said literally and also we learned in the public school is that if we are allowed so basically pragmatism is summarized by him as whichever cat that catches mice it's a good cat he will even say it doesn't matter if it's red or black yeah yeah yeah so perhaps we should ask what is good but I mean in this context so look at what is happening at this very moment I will give you one actual example so the state of China is now so what it's doing is lessening the influence of their public approaching either pedagogically or in the sense of control seeing many mega million key opinion leaders online banned for their radical approach of playing the role of propagandists so they are lessening the influence of ideology so it's like we don't want to talk about it's good or bad nothing we don't want sorry to interrupt you but let that's word that's extremely interesting because I saw in many countries this today it's no longer even that they want propaganda for official ideology no just you know which country I met some people from there is even further in this so I heard it's Vietnam they simply most universities there I would say they simply don't have philosophy department sociology you have art something and technology but you know what I wanted so that you will go on improvising along these lines how do you see the role do the Western media uh exaggerate it or it's really something I know I will pronounce it wrong this [unintelligible] let let it rot bao lan or what movement the idea is that many young people have this idea live modestly just stay out of first is this a really massive phenomenon or something exaggerated ah aha so I mean I I could give you an example to maybe describe this let it rot so um for once what I can see exactly fitting with what you name in terms of your psychoanalytic session forty years ago you said that you cannot stop talking just to prevent things from changing in Tiananmen Square today you are no longer allowed to take a walk during the night in the square however precisely you are allowed to commute cycling in bikes through the night Tiananmen Square with a Mao's portrait hovering about the sky so that's really interesting because that movement doesn't allow you to stop like as I so that so that I continue with again very fragmentally again echoing with your comment on the on the first emperor Qin so what Qin was did something that's really unique and incredible in China was unification of units so it's described in the book called *The Future of Nostalgia* by Svet- Svetla- sorry Svet- Svetlana Boym and she was talking I know her yeah yeah just talking about how the unification of units really echoes with the American dream and how the progressiveness that you were talking about as well the idea of progression and um I think what is interesting is how the idea of individual sense and what she's talking about in my own in reflective nostalgia that she's talking about is really changing so now I answer your question yesterday which is what is the alternative I think what is the alternative is clearly how it's less about the ideological aspect which is really really chaotic and I think what is really interesting is how we can draw an alternative of individual or affective aspect to look at history to look at what we uh had in the past which are very different in terms of the Western and the Eastern so maybe one more fragment to wrap up what I'm talking about so the Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han Byung-Chul Han who wrote *The Burnout Society* those kind of books uh-huh he wrote a book called *Shanzhai: Deconstruction in China* and that book he was really talking about the idea of a circular relational non-essentialist perspective in the Eastern culture and that aspect is contradicting to what he argued the idea of copyright in the Western society like we have an identity and I think what we are facing in terms of this kind of again I was talking about the intricacy of the Eastern-Western global economy is these again like the haunting aspect of these kind of cultural residue of that kind of circular history motion which is very much like the the China before the the Brit the British opened their gate so that I think is in my answer to your no but I would love if I may ask something more here because I find this so interesting first I know you don't like the guy but Byung-Chul Han something the Korean South Korean but he claims in his book I forgot which one that the very notion of Asia as a unity emerged from British and other colonizers all of a sudden they become aware wait a minute we are Asia it's paradoxically a result and this is why I hope you will agree with this that this idea of inert Asia disturbed by Europe it's totally a European projection and here comes my I know I'm not saying anything new but you know here comes my horror everybody knows this but it has to be emphasized today of the opium war which is for me one of the mega crimes of history I looked at some history books blah blah and probably they were true I discovered you know before opium war China was not an empire in confusion decline it worked not per capita but in global product China in was three times stronger than United Kingdom the symbol of Western success and so on so again it's not that you had a country in decline which then occupied and then it's cruel as Marx thought brutal colonization but nonetheless brings progress China had very well organized for example through central power distribution of food supplies so that if there was hunger or drought in one part food came from this old collapse I mean 19th century was an unimaginable catastrophe for China the same goes for India and so on no so uh but so what I still don't get if I may insist with you both of you uh this mega question for me okay where again where do you see the alternative what precisely because you used yesterday the term capitalist creativity not capitalist but socialist creativity so that we don't become too boring for the other could explain what did you mean by this concretely yeah maybe some tendencies of the platform what do you mean by sorry don't know platform socialism yeah well it's a same new term I didn't know yeah but I mean like in in China for example like we are dealing a lot through regulations with uh the the the platform so [unintelligible] I sorry explain to us what do you mean by platforms platforms like Amazon and yeah yeah yeah Uber yeah yeah yeah so you think that this works I'm delighted if you will say this in an optimistic way you think that platforms like Uber are not just a bad aspect of feudal decadence of capitalism that they can be refunctioned functioned in a different way yes yes yes that is extremely important yes yes how do you prevent feudalization are platforms publicly more controlled or it has to be a co-op so I mean like there are even in China there are uh you know in Italy the Bologna or what the city Bologna the city yeah yeah they they have some very interesting thing uh which they kind of are saying it's kind of like a coop valley instead of like Silicon Valley it's kind of alternative system to mobilize uh you know technological creativity through coops which is more uh similar to a sort of like platform socialism no I agree with it and I can supplement you then I give you the word again I know the same is happening with some big agricultural complexes not the one north of north of uh Gibraltar which is totally industrialized this is capitalism at its worst you know every summer or when hundreds of thousands came as slaves from North Africa to make the fields I mean literally more than half of vegetables or whatever salads this disgusting stuff it's too healthy for me is produced there but you know which country that in Central Spain they have and then a country that should be a surprise you wouldn't expect it Switzerland which we thought is just go to a big Swiss city they have two great chains of supermarkets the strongest is Coop and it means what it says it's a cooperation the point is that will you know capitalism is very strong to in limiting this to a domain can this model be extended to like I don't know like medical industry the digitalization and so on because I agree this is one of the hopeful signs and it
how dare you talk like this when I will like to be humiliated and beaten I will organize it and pay for it you know it's absolutely correct answer it's one of the few examples where I would have done the same if I were to be a masochist I would prefer to pay somebody because in this way you depersonalize it to some extent no money also has sorry forgetting this talk yeah China attacking okay please finally yeah where are we ah okay yeah essentially as the cultural revolution is very brilliantly and successfully presented as not being sufficient to sustain the cultural revolution is described as a graceful and successful lesson on necessity to sustain no but so they didn't so they didn't put it into that of no no it's just it was a success yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah things basically communism has to be integrated into economy it appears very intricate and complex so responding to your comments on Deng Xiaoping so basically what Xiaoping said literally and also we learned in the public school is that if we are allowed so basically pragmatism is summarized by him as whichever cat that catches mice it's a good cat he will even say it doesn't matter if it's red or black yeah yeah yeah so perhaps we should ask what is good but I mean in this context so look at what is happening at this very moment I will give you one actual example so the state of China is now so what it's doing is lessening the influence of their public approaching either pedagogically or in the sense of control seeing many mega million key opinion leaders online banned for their radical approach of playing the role of propagandists so they are lessening the influence of ideology so it's like we don't want to talk about it's good or bad nothing we don't want sorry to interrupt you but let that's word that's extremely interesting because I saw in many countries this today it's no longer even that they want propaganda for official ideology no just you know which country I met some people from there is even further in this so I heard it's Vietnam they simply most universities there I would say they simply don't have philosophy department sociology you have art something and technology but you know what I wanted so that you will go on improvising along these lines how do you see the role do the Western media uh exaggerate it or it's really something I know I will pronounce it wrong this [unintelligible] let let it rot bao lan or what movement the idea is that many young people have this idea live modestly just stay out of first is this a really massive phenomenon or something exaggerated ah aha so I mean I I could give you an example to maybe describe this let it rot so um for once what I can see exactly fitting with what you name in terms of your psychoanalytic session forty years ago you said that you cannot stop talking just to prevent things from changing in Tiananmen Square today you are no longer allowed to take a walk during the night in the square however precisely you are allowed to commute cycling in bikes through the night Tiananmen Square with a Mao's portrait hovering about the sky so that's really interesting because that movement doesn't allow you to stop like as I so that so that I continue with again very fragmentally again echoing with your comment on the on the first emperor Qin so what Qin was did something that's really unique and incredible in China was unification of units so it's described in the book called *The Future of Nostalgia* by Svet- Svetla- sorry Svet- Svetlana Boym and she was talking I know her yeah yeah just talking about how the unification of units really echoes with the American dream and how the progressiveness that you were talking about as well the idea of progression and um I think what is interesting is how the idea of individual sense and what she's talking about in my own in reflective nostalgia that she's talking about is really changing so now I answer your question yesterday which is what is the alternative I think what is the alternative is clearly how it's less about the ideological aspect which is really really chaotic and I think what is really interesting is how we can draw an alternative of individual or affective aspect to look at history to look at what we uh had in the past which are very different in terms of the Western and the Eastern so maybe one more fragment to wrap up what I'm talking about so the Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han Byung-Chul Han who wrote *The Burnout Society* those kind of books uh-huh he wrote a book called *Shanzhai: Deconstruction in China* and that book he was really talking about the idea of a circular relational non-essentialist perspective in the Eastern culture and that aspect is contradicting to what he argued the idea of copyright in the Western society like we have an identity and I think what we are facing in terms of this kind of again I was talking about the intricacy of the Eastern-Western global economy is these again like the haunting aspect of these kind of cultural residue of that kind of circular history motion which is very much like the the China before the the Brit the British opened their gate so that I think is in my answer to your no but I would love if I may ask something more here because I find this so interesting first I know you don't like the guy but Byung-Chul Han something the Korean South Korean but he claims in his book I forgot which one that the very notion of Asia as a unity emerged from British and other colonizers all of a sudden they become aware wait a minute we are Asia it's paradoxically a result and this is why I hope you will agree with this that this idea of inert Asia disturbed by Europe it's totally a European projection and here comes my I know I'm not saying anything new but you know here comes my horror everybody knows this but it has to be emphasized today of the opium war which is for me one of the mega crimes of history I looked at some history books blah blah and probably they were true I discovered you know before opium war China was not an empire in confusion decline it worked not per capita but in global product China in was three times stronger than United Kingdom the symbol of Western success and so on so again it's not that you had a country in decline which then occupied and then it's cruel as Marx thought brutal colonization but nonetheless brings progress China had very well organized for example through central power distribution of food supplies so that if there was hunger or drought in one part food came from this old collapse I mean 19th century was an unimaginable catastrophe for China the same goes for India and so on no so uh but so what I still don't get if I may insist with you both of you uh this mega question for me okay where again where do you see the alternative what precisely because you used yesterday the term capitalist creativity not capitalist but socialist creativity so that we don't become too boring for the other could explain what did you mean by this concretely yeah maybe some tendencies of the platform what do you mean by sorry don't know platform socialism yeah well it's a same new term I didn't know yeah but I mean like in in China for example like we are dealing a lot through regulations with uh the the the platform so [unintelligible] I sorry explain to us what do you mean by platforms platforms like Amazon and yeah yeah yeah Uber yeah yeah yeah so you think that this works I'm delighted if you will say this in an optimistic way you think that platforms like Uber are not just a bad aspect of feudal decadence of capitalism that they can be refunctioned functioned in a different way yes yes yes that is extremely important yes yes how do you prevent feudalization are platforms publicly more controlled or it has to be a co-op so I mean like there are even in China there are uh you know in Italy the Bologna or what the city Bologna the city yeah yeah they they have some very interesting thing uh which they kind of are saying it's kind of like a coop valley instead of like Silicon Valley it's kind of alternative system to mobilize uh you know technological creativity through coops which is more uh similar to a sort of like platform socialism no I agree with it and I can supplement you then I give you the word again I know the same is happening with some big agricultural complexes not the one north of north of uh Gibraltar which is totally industrialized this is capitalism at its worst you know every summer or when hundreds of thousands came as slaves from North Africa to make the fields I mean literally more than half of vegetables or whatever salads this disgusting stuff it's too healthy for me is produced there but you know which country that in Central Spain they have and then a country that should be a surprise you wouldn't expect it Switzerland which we thought is just go to a big Swiss city they have two great chains of supermarkets the strongest is Coop and it means what it says it's a cooperation the point is that will you know capitalism is very strong to in limiting this to a domain can this model be extended to like I don't know like medical industry the digitalization and so on because I agree this is one of the hopeful signs and it
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makes
makes
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me very glad you see
me very glad you see
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that's what I want to learn I simply didn't know that this is happening in China also how do those in power
that's what I want to learn I simply didn't know that this is happening in China also how do those in power
Slavoj Žižek
up up up relate to it oh my god you are really too innocent Chinese because in my
up up up relate to it oh my god you are really too innocent Chinese because in my
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decadent mind the first question that emerges yeah she worked at the medical industry and she's she's one of well I mean she's not like ideologically saying okay socialism that's
decadent mind the first question that emerges yeah she worked at the medical industry and she's she's one of well I mean she's not like ideologically saying okay socialism that's
Slavoj Žižek
why I try to bring everything into platform this is
why I try to bring everything into platform this is
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it's just like
it's just like
Slavoj Žižek
she does it to through her conscious and a lot of people are like that at at local
she does it to through her conscious and a lot of people are like that at at local
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level so I you know maybe we should do this maybe we should sorry to interrupt you you can speak again maybe we should stop with this eternal complaining about how horrible things are and just not just look at a good sign here a good sign there but make a list
level so I you know maybe we should do this maybe we should sorry to interrupt you you can speak again maybe we should stop with this eternal complaining about how horrible things are and just not just look at a good sign here a good sign there but make a list
Slavoj Žižek
of good signs for example I repeat myself it's I forgot in which one of my
of good signs for example I repeat myself it's I forgot in which one of my
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books but I love this example maybe I mention it here years ago when people say you ignore empirical research you know concrete no I don't but there are because there are so interesting things there for example an American academic institution paid by a big corporation because the corporation thought the result will be different did a wide research they began in some research scientific institution itself they took a group of people who were probably measured by those standards not paid enough so they gradually raised their wages and observed the result how did it affect not only their productivity but also
books but I love this example maybe I mention it here years ago when people say you ignore empirical research you know concrete no I don't but there are because there are so interesting things there for example an American academic institution paid by a big corporation because the corporation thought the result will be different did a wide research they began in some research scientific institution itself they took a group of people who were probably measured by those standards not paid enough so they gradually raised their wages and observed the result how did it affect not only their productivity but also
Slavoj Žižek
their satisfaction and they came to a wonderful result it's not the more money you get the more you want no up to a certain not such high degree yes if you were paid more you work a little bit better and so on but since we were dealing with a creative institution where you were they were inventing new things and they were workers personally engaged isn't it a beautiful paradox which proves if I can put this statement in a stupid naturalist term that socialism is not foreign to human nature against this egotist liberalism when you reach a certain level it becomes counterproductive because individuals then got too obsessed with money oh can I earn more even more even more that the quality of their work falls then there was
their satisfaction and they came to a wonderful result it's not the more money you get the more you want no up to a certain not such high degree yes if you were paid more you work a little bit better and so on but since we were dealing with a creative institution where you were they were inventing new things and they were workers personally engaged isn't it a beautiful paradox which proves if I can put this statement in a stupid naturalist term that socialism is not foreign to human nature against this egotist liberalism when you reach a certain level it becomes counterproductive because individuals then got too obsessed with money oh can I earn more even more even more that the quality of their work falls then there was
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an obvious leftist approach isn't this typical of the highly developed American society so they did what honest researchers should do they repeated the same
an obvious leftist approach isn't this typical of the highly developed American society so they did what honest researchers should do they repeated the same
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experiment in some small somewhere in the middle of India small Indian town in an African town all around the result was the same so you know so it's wrong this naive idea that you know money is like a curse you have it you want more and you want more and more no maybe you want but
experiment in some small somewhere in the middle of India small Indian town in an African town all around the result was the same so you know so it's wrong this naive idea that you know money is like a curse you have it you want more and you want more and more no maybe you want but
Slavoj Žižek
it's
it's
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not so simple you want for the majority you just want a relatively comfortable don't forget about that guy yeah yeah a relatively comfortable life you know and and also the other example maybe you remember it I found it wonderful okay nonetheless I hope I'm alive because here is a good example allowed to mention Israel in Israel a kindergarten where you put small monsters we call them children I think they should no I have sorry here I have two sons and for me did you see the movie *Alien* this is the best movie about what birth means you know but children are monsters okay but what I want to say is that they had a problem in this kindergarten they noticed that parents are coming late the kindergarten was open till four and parents said oh sorry I got engaged they come at five six so they made they said we will solve this problem we will charge parents for every hour that you are late you will you know and this gives you a little bit of a faith into the even I'm not afraid to say honesty of many ordinary people you know what was the result more parents were even later to pick them up because before they had a sense of guilt now they said okay I pay so fuck it and they were even more late you know so we should the first thing is and this is how I would also perceive your coops and so on idea is to drop this common perception that capitalism nonetheless fits human nature that we are by nature egotists and you know want to hurt people no human nature I doubt if it exists but like what we can abstract as human nature I think as
not so simple you want for the majority you just want a relatively comfortable don't forget about that guy yeah yeah a relatively comfortable life you know and and also the other example maybe you remember it I found it wonderful okay nonetheless I hope I'm alive because here is a good example allowed to mention Israel in Israel a kindergarten where you put small monsters we call them children I think they should no I have sorry here I have two sons and for me did you see the movie *Alien* this is the best movie about what birth means you know but children are monsters okay but what I want to say is that they had a problem in this kindergarten they noticed that parents are coming late the kindergarten was open till four and parents said oh sorry I got engaged they come at five six so they made they said we will solve this problem we will charge parents for every hour that you are late you will you know and this gives you a little bit of a faith into the even I'm not afraid to say honesty of many ordinary people you know what was the result more parents were even later to pick them up because before they had a sense of guilt now they said okay I pay so fuck it and they were even more late you know so we should the first thing is and this is how I would also perceive your coops and so on idea is to drop this common perception that capitalism nonetheless fits human nature that we are by nature egotists and you know want to hurt people no human nature I doubt if it exists but like what we can abstract as human nature I think as
Slavoj Žižek
Freud says somewhere very nicely we are both worse and better than we think we are better than we think it's obvious for example I quoted him here my friend who is now from his head down vegetable Hanif Kureishi no he he gave me the writer the best lesson of Hegelian concrete universality five years ago he told me I'm just finishing a new novel which will be totally different from the others I told him with aggressive humor because this was in but still the hero will have a father who will be a failed Pakistani state employee who wants to be a writer no because this was in all and you know what was his answer but don't we all have fathers who are failed Pakistani diplomats who want to be a writer you know like that particular image stood for you know so what his biggest shock he wrote this in his book whatever blah blah he sent it to me but he had one good observation how much honesty he discovered where you wouldn't expect it he is now getting paid by NHS because he is really vegetable down from here he now after training he can move hands a little bit but not enough to press a button or eat so he gets people who are all the time with him one two and especially in the morning and early evening somebody not always women that's very good also mostly even men come to him to do the disgusting thing you know for him it's a problem to pee and especially to shit you know and it worked this time I reacted to this with extreme vulgarity once I visited him and a nice lady was there who came to to do this but it's a problem with him because they have to put
Freud says somewhere very nicely we are both worse and better than we think we are better than we think it's obvious for example I quoted him here my friend who is now from his head down vegetable Hanif Kureishi no he he gave me the writer the best lesson of Hegelian concrete universality five years ago he told me I'm just finishing a new novel which will be totally different from the others I told him with aggressive humor because this was in but still the hero will have a father who will be a failed Pakistani state employee who wants to be a writer no because this was in all and you know what was his answer but don't we all have fathers who are failed Pakistani diplomats who want to be a writer you know like that particular image stood for you know so what his biggest shock he wrote this in his book whatever blah blah he sent it to me but he had one good observation how much honesty he discovered where you wouldn't expect it he is now getting paid by NHS because he is really vegetable down from here he now after training he can move hands a little bit but not enough to press a button or eat so he gets people who are all the time with him one two and especially in the morning and early evening somebody not always women that's very good also mostly even men come to him to do the disgusting thing you know for him it's a problem to pee and especially to shit you know and it worked this time I reacted to this with extreme vulgarity once I visited him and a nice lady was there who came to to do this but it's a problem with him because they have to put
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him on his stomach and then the disgusting
him on his stomach and then the disgusting
Slavoj Žižek
story they put a plastic how do you call it what do you put on hands yeah gloves and then they had to excite his ass that's the only way no so I told the lady we laughed so much that you know like usually if you want to hurt somebody you tell him up yours you are full of shit but you have the right to tell it to him literally you know okay but what I want to say is that the shock for him was that many of these people complain how low they are paid they don't have free time and then he asked them but why don't you change your
story they put a plastic how do you call it what do you put on hands yeah gloves and then they had to excite his ass that's the only way no so I told the lady we laughed so much that you know like usually if you want to hurt somebody you tell him up yours you are full of shit but you have the right to tell it to him literally you know okay but what I want to say is that the shock for him was that many of these people complain how low they are paid they don't have free time and then he asked them but why don't you change your
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job and he got from many of them this simple reaction but people depend on me I cannot let them and he was so surprised how many people reacted like this so always remember this simple egotist image you know of we people are evil if
job and he got from many of them this simple reaction but people depend on me I cannot let them and he was so surprised how many people reacted like this so always remember this simple egotist image you know of we people are evil if
Slavoj Žižek
we are we are better than we think but at the same time we are worse because I agree here with Fred Jameson and Lacan the problem is not envy the problem is not I want to have it the problem is I don't want you to have it but I want to have it envy is absolutely if there is something that we can call natural pathology in human nature it's envy it's envy you know like uh you prefer that the other guy loses then for both of you to win something sorry we only have a couple of minutes left and two questions yeah but also that guy i feel uh you know you both of you have to go yeah let's do just this and then we can call it a day yeah please so it is sort of that deadlock where force was back to zero point so result this crisis the first sort of a breakthrough right and you mean today's crisis ecology AI everything yeah that's a very difficult even philosophical question which I think it's it's naive but I I am more fundamentally pessimist than it may appear what if what happens when imagine a society where people who remain like they are today are material needs are satisfied you can lazy and so on and so on I'm afraid what will
we are we are better than we think but at the same time we are worse because I agree here with Fred Jameson and Lacan the problem is not envy the problem is not I want to have it the problem is I don't want you to have it but I want to have it envy is absolutely if there is something that we can call natural pathology in human nature it's envy it's envy you know like uh you prefer that the other guy loses then for both of you to win something sorry we only have a couple of minutes left and two questions yeah but also that guy i feel uh you know you both of you have to go yeah let's do just this and then we can call it a day yeah please so it is sort of that deadlock where force was back to zero point so result this crisis the first sort of a breakthrough right and you mean today's crisis ecology AI everything yeah that's a very difficult even philosophical question which I think it's it's naive but I I am more fundamentally pessimist than it may appear what if what happens when imagine a society where people who remain like they are today are material needs are satisfied you can lazy and so on and so on I'm afraid what will
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happen maybe
happen maybe
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aggressiveness will explode and so on even more I still think that you this will sound horrible I cannot go into justification
aggressiveness will explode and so on even more I still think that you this will sound horrible I cannot go into justification
Slavoj Žižek
psychoanalytic but people don't have don't really want to be happy I think one of the greatest stupidities of all humanity is this first line or second of the American what was it constitution or proclamation pursuit of happiness isn't all human history a pursuit of unhappiness systematically and I think the solution is not no we will cure you what brings relative happiness whatever is the same what I was mentioning with that Hanif Kureishi case is even if you don't like it for me to be happy you must discover some I call this in almost religious terms Protestant Berufung but I'm a materialist like you must find a vocation which cannot be just pleasure it's just this is what I am here it can be helping people it can be being creative or whatever it can be love but not this satisfied love passionate love whatever I so for me you know yesterday Elia is she here or she escaped again she had eh she gave me a package of books in it it was I don't agree with him this guy Nick Bostrom or Bost futurologist who approaches this problem in a quite although I don't agree with him in a quite interesting way she asks what would have happened if we enter a society where with full automation of production problems are solved and what and he is not totally stupid there he absolutely doesn't accept the solution that is offered it's very interesting in my country and in parts of Germany what is now emerging is what I called Marxist utopian Heideggerianism the idea is that if our needs will be automatically satisfied then we will discover new potentials in meditation mystical experience and so on I doubt it I cannot go into it now but my point this point let's focus on problems now is not just cheap pragmatic opportunism I don't want to dream about that I think that the worst thing is to both isn't this your question something for which the answer cannot be planned in advance it has to appear as non-intended consequence you know I think this is for me the key to any notion realistic notion of happiness when you plan to be happy it by definition gets happiness is ah Jon that's how probably they pronounce it we pronounce it Jon Elster Norwegian rational act theorists who probably hates me but he introduced I like his work a wonderful notion of states which are necessary byproducts there are crucial states which you cannot plan them if he his famous example is for example dignity if I say I act with dignity you make yourself ridiculous dignity must be something that this is why I know I'm not dignity must be something that emanates from how you act and I think relative happiness whatever is the same and I will give you to conclude or there is another one a wonderful example that's for me the lesson I forgot the author I quoted it two times in my book one of really I hope you know it there was even a movie made a British movie quarter of an hour movie on it I forgot the author go to go to Google you find it's two three pages story a guy who uh it's called *Store of the World* does it ring a bell to you *Store of the World* it's a very simple story as you will see it just a temporal trick a guy enters a some kind of psychiatrist whatever dealing with drugs guy and says is it true that if I pay you enough you will allow me to imagine living for some time in a world which will be happiness what I want then the guy after some time awakens goes home no different story that's crucial then the guy says okay I will see maybe the price is too high and goes takes in suburbs of London the story takes place takes subway goes home to his family and as he expects all the time when will I visit the psychiatrist again awaits it and in waiting for that moment his life goes on and so on happy events and so on and then he truly awakens and we see where he really is that all this that he thought I go home and think about the happy moment this was his happiness his still dream and he awakens and it's horror then he gives this psychiatrist all his earthly belongings two old cans of sardines one small bottle of oil and goes out into total ruins of London and so on and so on so you see the point what he staged as happiness it's not I'm have a fucking beautiful women or whatever vulgarity it's this happy calm awaiting for the event that was his happiness it's very effective story and again if you go to Google or YouTube just put *Store of the World*'s video it's a wonderfully done minutes video so you see this would be my lesson don't think at the final result as a goal happiness is for me the guy was right this kind of happily awaiting but we should maybe stop for this I'm sorry what this ah another question ah you again you're dirty you must be some stupid leftist no sorry yeah I thought so you know um I guess this is a little bit related to what you're saying with the last guy guy about on you know uh happiness really coming from a a lack of having meaning uh but in sort of logic it takes you discussed the absence of a of a global capitalist world view as a form of a form of worldlessness um which you I
psychoanalytic but people don't have don't really want to be happy I think one of the greatest stupidities of all humanity is this first line or second of the American what was it constitution or proclamation pursuit of happiness isn't all human history a pursuit of unhappiness systematically and I think the solution is not no we will cure you what brings relative happiness whatever is the same what I was mentioning with that Hanif Kureishi case is even if you don't like it for me to be happy you must discover some I call this in almost religious terms Protestant Berufung but I'm a materialist like you must find a vocation which cannot be just pleasure it's just this is what I am here it can be helping people it can be being creative or whatever it can be love but not this satisfied love passionate love whatever I so for me you know yesterday Elia is she here or she escaped again she had eh she gave me a package of books in it it was I don't agree with him this guy Nick Bostrom or Bost futurologist who approaches this problem in a quite although I don't agree with him in a quite interesting way she asks what would have happened if we enter a society where with full automation of production problems are solved and what and he is not totally stupid there he absolutely doesn't accept the solution that is offered it's very interesting in my country and in parts of Germany what is now emerging is what I called Marxist utopian Heideggerianism the idea is that if our needs will be automatically satisfied then we will discover new potentials in meditation mystical experience and so on I doubt it I cannot go into it now but my point this point let's focus on problems now is not just cheap pragmatic opportunism I don't want to dream about that I think that the worst thing is to both isn't this your question something for which the answer cannot be planned in advance it has to appear as non-intended consequence you know I think this is for me the key to any notion realistic notion of happiness when you plan to be happy it by definition gets happiness is ah Jon that's how probably they pronounce it we pronounce it Jon Elster Norwegian rational act theorists who probably hates me but he introduced I like his work a wonderful notion of states which are necessary byproducts there are crucial states which you cannot plan them if he his famous example is for example dignity if I say I act with dignity you make yourself ridiculous dignity must be something that this is why I know I'm not dignity must be something that emanates from how you act and I think relative happiness whatever is the same and I will give you to conclude or there is another one a wonderful example that's for me the lesson I forgot the author I quoted it two times in my book one of really I hope you know it there was even a movie made a British movie quarter of an hour movie on it I forgot the author go to go to Google you find it's two three pages story a guy who uh it's called *Store of the World* does it ring a bell to you *Store of the World* it's a very simple story as you will see it just a temporal trick a guy enters a some kind of psychiatrist whatever dealing with drugs guy and says is it true that if I pay you enough you will allow me to imagine living for some time in a world which will be happiness what I want then the guy after some time awakens goes home no different story that's crucial then the guy says okay I will see maybe the price is too high and goes takes in suburbs of London the story takes place takes subway goes home to his family and as he expects all the time when will I visit the psychiatrist again awaits it and in waiting for that moment his life goes on and so on happy events and so on and then he truly awakens and we see where he really is that all this that he thought I go home and think about the happy moment this was his happiness his still dream and he awakens and it's horror then he gives this psychiatrist all his earthly belongings two old cans of sardines one small bottle of oil and goes out into total ruins of London and so on and so on so you see the point what he staged as happiness it's not I'm have a fucking beautiful women or whatever vulgarity it's this happy calm awaiting for the event that was his happiness it's very effective story and again if you go to Google or YouTube just put *Store of the World*'s video it's a wonderfully done minutes video so you see this would be my lesson don't think at the final result as a goal happiness is for me the guy was right this kind of happily awaiting but we should maybe stop for this I'm sorry what this ah another question ah you again you're dirty you must be some stupid leftist no sorry yeah I thought so you know um I guess this is a little bit related to what you're saying with the last guy guy about on you know uh happiness really coming from a a lack of having meaning uh but in sort of logic it takes you discussed the absence of a of a global capitalist world view as a form of a form of worldlessness um which you I
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follow
follow
Slavoj Žižek
Badiou here Badiou developed this I refer to him just to make it clear
Badiou here Badiou developed this I refer to him just to make it clear
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Alain
Alain
unknown
Badiou
Badiou
Slavoj Žižek
developed this idea but I agree with him sorry go on yeah suggests
developed this idea but I agree with him sorry go on yeah suggests
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that it can still be
that it can still be
Slavoj Žižek
used um as a way of regaining local um meaningful context in like a communication between um localized worlds um and you also mentioned yesterday talking about how um this paraphrasing a little bit but a neutral truth um can't you can never isolate neutral truth from the context in why it was mentioned um and that in this you know maybe even with the current political climate there's no uniform truth left there's no uh uniform truth this uh kind of reminds me a lot of do you know um Deleuze's *A Thousand Plateaus* you oh uh uh this was I was there when the book was written not there there but uh yeah of course yeah I think it's much superior than *Anti-Oedipus* my big hatred is *Anti-Oedipus* *Mille Plateaux* it goes oh yeah up yeah is this decentralized plateaus um that allow for you know local non-totalizing meaningful constructs and new situated and localized cognitive maps uh within the worldless capitalist frame allowing for um yeah genuinely co-existing and like mutually they are just local worlds you know what's only the problem today is that nonetheless at the operative level we nonetheless have to together to regulate somehow this worldless world we cannot just say when when there are ecological catastrophes and that what I do here can be directly directly uh directly directly directly influenced by how you are ruining our common nature we need but you know where I found the truth about it maybe you know it I quoted it in I forgot which one of my last books if yeah I you know where this works I almost cried I discovered it you know what is my secret dream my favorite place that I visited till now is you know this I've written Svalbard islands halfway from North Norway to North Pole paradise on earth but then I asked about other places I dreamt about visiting St. Helena where Napoleon was because it still has once a week flights but then I discovered the real gem you know the smallest community living in an island Tristan da Cunha C-U-N-H-A it's kilometers from the nearest inhabited island which is St. Helena it's no small airport St. Helena does it where Napoleon was kept and it's a small island and there are and some people living there you can visit it but it's very complicated because only every one or two months a boat sails there brings them something and they they and then I read a report on it it made me cry especially the finale right they live in communism basically they mostly do the farming and they collectively decide not always the same you will do this that they bring all together they distribute it whatever now you will say ha ha ha but their life would be miserable ha ha ha now comes the beautiful [unintelligible] some fifteen years ago there was an earthquake something terribly went wrong and the British government formally it's in charge of that island they brought them all to England and for two years they lived here happy supported by the state and after two years the situation in the island normalized you know that almost all of them returned just two of them or what because of some health problems didn't but so they didn't know that they were happy but in some sense they were happy you know they were here state supported pornography hardcore what are all the pleasures of our life you know afford us here no they returned there so isn't this nonetheless again another proof that hey this the right localization works the only problem is that you know the world is not just a group of islands like that no but yes yes I agree and this is also how I perceive that's why I mentioned them yesterday you know this apparently apparently crazy religious group like Amish or whatever no Amish don't want to you know they have this wonderful ritual I forgot the name I mentioned it in my books where okay they have this severe very limited education but then when you are in late puberty for two years you are Rumspringa from herumspringen this old German you are free to go into the as they say world of the Americans whites or whatever you know there and then you decide after two years okay it's tough decision because the rule is if you don't come back then they break contact with you but you are free for two years you can do again my usual stuff hardcore drugs sex
used um as a way of regaining local um meaningful context in like a communication between um localized worlds um and you also mentioned yesterday talking about how um this paraphrasing a little bit but a neutral truth um can't you can never isolate neutral truth from the context in why it was mentioned um and that in this you know maybe even with the current political climate there's no uniform truth left there's no uh uniform truth this uh kind of reminds me a lot of do you know um Deleuze's *A Thousand Plateaus* you oh uh uh this was I was there when the book was written not there there but uh yeah of course yeah I think it's much superior than *Anti-Oedipus* my big hatred is *Anti-Oedipus* *Mille Plateaux* it goes oh yeah up yeah is this decentralized plateaus um that allow for you know local non-totalizing meaningful constructs and new situated and localized cognitive maps uh within the worldless capitalist frame allowing for um yeah genuinely co-existing and like mutually they are just local worlds you know what's only the problem today is that nonetheless at the operative level we nonetheless have to together to regulate somehow this worldless world we cannot just say when when there are ecological catastrophes and that what I do here can be directly directly uh directly directly directly influenced by how you are ruining our common nature we need but you know where I found the truth about it maybe you know it I quoted it in I forgot which one of my last books if yeah I you know where this works I almost cried I discovered it you know what is my secret dream my favorite place that I visited till now is you know this I've written Svalbard islands halfway from North Norway to North Pole paradise on earth but then I asked about other places I dreamt about visiting St. Helena where Napoleon was because it still has once a week flights but then I discovered the real gem you know the smallest community living in an island Tristan da Cunha C-U-N-H-A it's kilometers from the nearest inhabited island which is St. Helena it's no small airport St. Helena does it where Napoleon was kept and it's a small island and there are and some people living there you can visit it but it's very complicated because only every one or two months a boat sails there brings them something and they they and then I read a report on it it made me cry especially the finale right they live in communism basically they mostly do the farming and they collectively decide not always the same you will do this that they bring all together they distribute it whatever now you will say ha ha ha but their life would be miserable ha ha ha now comes the beautiful [unintelligible] some fifteen years ago there was an earthquake something terribly went wrong and the British government formally it's in charge of that island they brought them all to England and for two years they lived here happy supported by the state and after two years the situation in the island normalized you know that almost all of them returned just two of them or what because of some health problems didn't but so they didn't know that they were happy but in some sense they were happy you know they were here state supported pornography hardcore what are all the pleasures of our life you know afford us here no they returned there so isn't this nonetheless again another proof that hey this the right localization works the only problem is that you know the world is not just a group of islands like that no but yes yes I agree and this is also how I perceive that's why I mentioned them yesterday you know this apparently apparently crazy religious group like Amish or whatever no Amish don't want to you know they have this wonderful ritual I forgot the name I mentioned it in my books where okay they have this severe very limited education but then when you are in late puberty for two years you are Rumspringa from herumspringen this old German you are free to go into the as they say world of the Americans whites or whatever you know there and then you decide after two years okay it's tough decision because the rule is if you don't come back then they break contact with you but you are free for two years you can do again my usual stuff hardcore drugs sex
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everything
everything
Slavoj Žižek
you know and but uh the mystery is that a large
you know and but uh the mystery is that a large
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okay it depends how much there is psychological manipulation in it but a large majority returns they would
okay it depends how much there is psychological manipulation in it but a large majority returns they would
Slavoj Žižek
be this type of a group for me they don't hate the outside world because you know they are
be this type of a group for me they don't hate the outside world because you know they are
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prohibited to have phones no problem their religion permits them if one of them has a medical emergency you run to the neighbor who is white American normal Englishman they differ and he can call call it and so on but nonetheless there is no envy you know that's my utopia not I don't trust this so-called citizens of the world why
prohibited to have phones no problem their religion permits them if one of them has a medical emergency you run to the neighbor who is white American normal Englishman they differ and he can call call it and so on but nonetheless there is no envy you know that's my utopia not I don't trust this so-called citizens of the world why
Slavoj Žižek
don't I trust them because I'm one of them obviously you know very decadent I don't have even friends in my own town
don't I trust them because I'm one of them obviously you know very decadent I don't have even friends in my own town
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Ljubljana I have just family two sons from previous marriage and my wife and three four philosophers
Ljubljana I have just family two sons from previous marriage and my wife and three four philosophers
Slavoj Žižek
Mladen Dolar Alenka Zupančič and so on I don't socialize there I have I am at home when I am with friends here in New York wherever but it's I don't especially enjoy it because there is something very fake elitistic in this you know sorry maybe we should finish okay I'm very grateful to you you I would very much like to learn or you this co-op stuff and all that do you have anything on paper but do you know somebody who you know in the same sense that I when Reagan was president I knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who was there in the White House in any case let's say thank you especially finishing on some optimistic note it's unusual thank you very much and have a nice time and are you decadent as me I hate White Lotus but I will watch next Monday what will be who will be the killer you know nonetheless sorry I cannot help it thank you very much are you some unnatural Trump bitch what are you yeah what oh my god he just managed to escape you know the way anti-Semites say do some some of my best friends Trump are some of my best friends okay thank you very much for this debate okay let's go before I've seen something obscene tonight yeah yeah okay yeah bye-bye no bye-bye no bye-bye no bye-bye no bye-bye [noises] [music]
Mladen Dolar Alenka Zupančič and so on I don't socialize there I have I am at home when I am with friends here in New York wherever but it's I don't especially enjoy it because there is something very fake elitistic in this you know sorry maybe we should finish okay I'm very grateful to you you I would very much like to learn or you this co-op stuff and all that do you have anything on paper but do you know somebody who you know in the same sense that I when Reagan was president I knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who was there in the White House in any case let's say thank you especially finishing on some optimistic note it's unusual thank you very much and have a nice time and are you decadent as me I hate White Lotus but I will watch next Monday what will be who will be the killer you know nonetheless sorry I cannot help it thank you very much are you some unnatural Trump bitch what are you yeah what oh my god he just managed to escape you know the way anti-Semites say do some some of my best friends Trump are some of my best friends okay thank you very much for this debate okay let's go before I've seen something obscene tonight yeah yeah okay yeah bye-bye no bye-bye no bye-bye no bye-bye no bye-bye [noises] [music]