Slavoj Žižek — Democracy: Is This The End?
Talk · Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College ·
2022-11-04 · 2:17:03 · 17,463 words
ideologydemocracygeopolitics-warcapitalismhistoryphilosophy-generalfascism-populismpsychoanalysisrevolution-violencehegel-dialecticsreligion-theologycinema-art-cultureeveryday-lifecommunism-socialismecology-climateliberalism-political-correctnesseconomicssubjectivity
Žižek opens by praising the host’s book on Haiti, using the Haitian Revolution to argue for a 'dislocated' universality where European Enlightenment ideals are re-read through Third World struggles. He then introduces his 'kopí luwak' metaphor to describe right-wing populism as processed ideological waste, linking Western populism to Putin’s 'desatanization' of Ukraine. Finally, he critiques the current democratic crisis, citing the erosion of proceduralism and the rise of a 'civil war' dynamic, while analyzing the shift from 'objective' to 'subjective' social democracy and Habermas’s 'catch-up revolutions'. Žižek analyzes the decline of traditional paternal authority and the rise of the 'obscene master' in modern populism, arguing that the law functions through a cynical 'as if' stance rather than genuine belief. He critiques the psychoanalytic defense of this cynicism (Miller) and the anarchist solution (self-management), using examples from Hitler, Trump, and Rojava to illustrate the paradoxes of contemporary political authority. Žižek argues that contemporary global capitalism is undergoing an 'anarchist turn,' characterized by the disappearance of the welfare state and the rise of neo-feudal privatization of the commons (exemplified by Elon Musk). He contends that true freedom requires assuming authority and changing the field of options, citing leaders like Obama and Mandela. The discussion shifts to the paradox of predestination and free will, referencing Benjamin Libet, and concludes with an analysis of humor as a defense mechanism against trauma, contrasting Life is Beautiful with The Second Mother and discussing the role of jokes in the Yugoslav wars. In this extended Q&A excerpt Žižek champions Latin American radical left politics, especially Bolivia under Morales and García Linera, as a model of 'principled pragmatism' that avoids economic self-destruction while genuinely improving ordinary lives. He defends Assange and Snowden as exposers of Western hidden unfreedom, criticises Western neoliberal impositions on Ukraine and the left's subordination of all causes to fighting Russia, and analyses how the establishment co-opts identity politics through fake feminism and fake anti-racism. He addresses immigration, failed US interventions in Iraq and Libya, the necessity of charismatic leadership for radical left regimes, and closes with an extended discussion of climate change as entry into genuine mathematical chaos, rejecting the myth of a harmonious Mother Nature to return to.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 42
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Žižek’s term for how European concepts (like equality) are substantially changed when repeated in the Haitian Revolution, achieving true universality rather than mere colonial application.
Žižek’s metaphor describing right-wing populism as 'ideological kopí luwak': respectable critiques of elites are processed by 'right-wing apes' (civets) and turned into shit, legitimizing global capitalist exploitation.
Žižek’s coinage for Putin’s redefined goal in Ukraine, shifting from 'denazification' to 'desatanization,' positioning Ukraine as the edge of Satan in Western Europe.
Žižek’s concept of the 'zero level of civilization' where one offers something without expecting the other to accept, yet the other is obliged to accept it (the free choice on condition you make the right choice).
Cited from Sloterdijk: the basic social democratic values (education, healthcare) that became independent of elections and political parties, forming a stable social pact.
as “catch-up revolutions (nachhollende)”
Habermas’s term for Eastern European protests that were not motivated by a new post-communist vision but aimed to catch up to Western European liberal democratic standards.
A French phrase meaning 'all that moves is not red,' used to explain how populist right-wing movements channel popular unrest away from leftist goals.
as “conservative revolutionary”
Žižek’s description of actors who manipulate democratic mechanisms (like state congresses nominating electors) without being directly revolutionary, aiming to subvert the system from within.
Žižek’s description of the obscenity and racist/sexist enjoyment that accompanies the failure of the Fukuyamaist liberal democratic order.
A new form of leadership that replaces the symbolic paternal figure, characterized by direct, brutal enjoyment and the dismissal of opponents as enemies of the people.
as “urvater”
The Freudian myth of the primordial father, a brutal master who exploits and possesses all women, used by Žižek to describe the nature of Hitler and Stalin.
as “cynical distance”
The stance of acting 'as if' the law works while subjectively knowing it is a fake; Žižek argues this distance is insufficient because the truth lies in one's actions, not inner belief.
The Yugoslav socialist ideal of democratic socialism and worker self-management, which Žižek notes was cynically ignored by the bureaucracy to maintain power.
The paradoxical support by extreme right-wing populists for Israel, viewing Jews as creative and beneficial in Palestine but dangerous in the West, a dangerous game accepted by some Israeli governments.
A radical critique of Christianity from within, defined not by denying God's existence, but by refusing to serve God even if He exists (following Lacan's reading of Pascal).
A counter-movement to de facto anarchism, representing a political awakening against the current order.
The current epoch's condition where anarcho-capitalism reigns, creating a feeling of abandonment as the welfare state disappears.
The economic system coinciding with the end of the welfare state, characterized by the 'uberization' of life and direct contact between users and professionals via platforms.
The paradox that new authoritarianism (neo-feudalism) is not a contradiction to the state's disappearance but its messenger, masking the privatization of the commons.
as “neo-feudalism”
A societal structure where powerful individuals own key mediums of communication and public life, which Žižek critiques as a metaphor but acknowledges its weight.
as “privatization of the commons”
A new form of capitalism where the commons (like Twitter) remain commons in use but are owned by a private individual, creating a 'neo-feudal' obscenity.
as “predestination and anxiety”
The Protestant paradox where one is predestined but does not know how, creating anxiety about missing one's predetermined fate, which Žižek links to true freedom.
as “freedom as user's illusion”
The scientific/religious idea that all acts are predetermined, which Žižek engages with via Benjamin Libet's experiments on neural decision-making.
Benjamin Libet's concept that the space of free will is found in the ability to block or sabotage a predetermined action, not just in making positive decisions.
The ethical imperative to assume authority and act as if one is free, even if one knows it is a 'fake' or predetermined, because one cannot ethically act otherwise.
A figure (like Obama or Mandela) who does not dictate what is good for you, but paradoxically gives you your freedom by saying 'Yes, we can,' pushing you to break down existing structures.
The false freedom of choosing between pre-offered options (e.g., cheesecake vs. strawberry cake), which Žižek identifies as a form of slavery.
as “true act of freedom”
The act of changing or undermining the very scope and field of options provided by society, requiring a leader to push one into this freedom.
Žižek's Hegelian formula for the irreducible contradiction between local democracy and central leadership: the tension is constitutive, not a failure to be resolved by a cheap synthesis.
The idea that when tragedy is too traumatic to be faced with a 'properly tragic attitude,' jokes become the only viable response, as seen in Holocaust and Yugoslav war jokes.
Žižek's explicit coinage for being a committed radical leftist who nonetheless resists the temptation of self-destructive adventurism that wrecks the economy and hands power back to the right.
as “Google as private NSA”
Assange's definition, fully endorsed by Žižek: Google is a corporate-run National Security Agency, its surveillance infrastructure made invisible and palatable by being experienced as a free service, the West's most dangerous hidden unfreedom.
Žižek's formula (flagged with 'as I use always this formula'): the most dangerous form of unfreedom is the kind you do not feel as constraint, as when mass internet surveillance feels like free surfing.
as “ideology (incorporation of diversity)”
The hegemonic system's ability to absorb limited racial and gender openness, diverse cabinet appointments, to maintain its essential power structure and neutralise left critique.
Žižek's label for the hegemonic system's capacity to appoint token diverse figures (a Black chancellor, a female PM) in service of the most right-wing agenda, disarming identity-based critiques.
as “neocolonial exploitation”
Žižek invokes the term to insist immigration pressure is a structural consequence of ongoing economic domination of the Global South, not solvable by border policy, requiring a global rearrangement of economic relations.
Žižek's term for inauthentic but effective right-wing movements that channel working-class fear of immigrants, as seen in Sweden and Italy, produced when the left fails to address economic insecurity directly.
as “local democracy”
Žižek critically examines the anarchist ideal of authentic democracy through local community self-organisation, arguing it cannot scale to address global crises without larger structural coordination and cannot exist without the state infrastructure that enables it.
Žižek argues contra anarchists that every successful radical left regime requires a charismatic leader to mobilise people beyond institutional politics, while adding provocatively that such a leader should eventually be 'liquidated' once their mobilising role is over.
Term from dynamical systems theory deployed by Žižek to describe what top scientists warn against: climate change producing no new stable equilibrium but genuine unpredictable chaos with no 'natural' baseline to return to.
Žižek warns the ecological tipping point may have already been passed without a clear moment of awakening, like suddenly discovering one is already in love, meaning the 'five minutes to midnight' rhetoric may already be 'five minutes past'.
Žižek's paradoxical formulation: to save nature and ourselves as one species among many, humans must act as controlling managers of the entire planetary system, precisely the opposite of 'returning humbly to nature'.
Stories he reaches for 15
A French scientist asks Niels Bohr why he keeps a horseshoe for luck if he doesn't believe in it. Bohr replies: 'I don't believe it, but I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it.'
“i don't believe it. but i have it there because i was told that it works even if you don't believe in it.”
Žižek discusses Libet's neuroscientific experiment showing neural commands precede conscious decision, but highlights Libet's 'Hegelian' addition: free will exists in the ability to block or sabotage an action (the 'zero level of freedom').
“he proved that before you make the decision... the command in york. nererves to your hand to move are already on the way.”
Žižek recalls a 2005 TV show in London where people voted Tony Blair as the 'most unpopular person' in England, despite Blair winning the actual election two weeks later. This illustrates the gap between popular sentiment and formal political results.
“people were electing the most unpopular person in england. tony blair won. by the most hated person.”
Assange's book argues Google is a corporate-run National Security Agency: the dangerous Western form of surveillance is invisible because it is experienced as free surfing, the paradigm case of unfreedom experienced as freedom.
“he wrote a book on google where he defined google as a private version of nsa. national security agency.”
Žižek argues that jokes about the Holocaust and the Bosnian War (Srebrenica) are not trivial but necessary defenses against trauma, as the tragedy is too overwhelming for a 'properly tragic attitude.'
“when you are really in deep shit, tragedy, mass murders, it. too early, it's still too traumatic for you. to adopt a properly tragic attitude... the only way to do it is through jokes.”
Žižek critiques Life is Beautiful for its sentimental ending, proposing a more desperate alternative where the son knows the truth but pretends not to. He contrasts this with The Second Mother (Valentim), which he prefers for its desperate seriousness.
“i imagined a much more comical but at the same time totally desperate ending of the movie... when the father... is taken to be executed, he tried to turn it in joke”
Žižek cites the extreme heat dome in the Pacific Northwest/Canada as an example where local self-organization is insufficient, requiring global political action to address climate disturbances.
“think about the terrible heat dome... northwest united states, southwest canada... what the fuck will you say there with local approach?”
Butler argues we must recognise ourselves as just one species among many and act with more modesty toward nature; Žižek respectfully but firmly disagrees, precisely to save ourselves and nature we must act as planetary managers, not humble participants.
“here i respectfully disagree with judith butler... we have to learn to discover that we are only one of the species on our earth.”
In Yugoslavia, the ruling communist bureaucracy knew the official ideology was false; honest communists who took it seriously lost their posts because taking it seriously was a step toward dissidence.
“the ruling bureaucracy knew well that if you take the official ideology, seriously, is one step from dissidence.”
Our main energy sources, oil and coal, are the compressed remains of prehistoric mega-catastrophes; nature was never peaceful or homeostatic. Žižek's punchline: 'Mother Nature is a dirty stupid bitch', so 'returning to nature' is a dangerous fantasy masking the need for active planetary management.
“what mother nature? look dinosaur... our main sources of energy are oil and coal... mother nature is a dirty stupid bitch.”
Žižek poses a thought experiment: if you believe in determinism, you might let a drowning child die because 'it's determined.' He argues that true freedom is acting as if you are free, assuming the burden of responsibility even if predetermined.
“you see a small boy or girl drowning there... if you really believe in... full... determination. you would say, fuck it, it's determined.”
Žižek quotes Arendt's text on education, where parents wash their hands of responsibility, saying 'we are innocent,' because they are also lost in the world, illustrating the failure of modern authority.
“it is as though parents daily say, in this world even we are not very securely at home... we are innocent. we wash our hands. of you.”
Žižek recounts how Polish soldiers fighting for Napoleon switched sides to the Black army in Haiti after hearing them sing the Marseillaise, recognizing they were on the wrong side. He highlights Haiti’s subsequent payment of 60-80% of its state budget to France for 130 years (ending in 1946) as a symbolic punishment for revolution.
“Napoleon sent a strong part of his army were polish soldiers... the black army was singing marseillaise and they did something heroic.”
Thatcher recognised that newly wealthy Indian-British voters were sick of Labour taking minority support for granted, and won their allegiance, illustrating how the right co-opts minorities the left assumes are automatically on its side.
“genius, sorry i hate her, of margaret thatcher was that she got something... the newly rich indians... preferred conservative party.”
A woman kills her daughter to be raptured, but when the apocalypse comes, she refuses to say 'I love Jesus' because God did horrible things to her. She chooses eternal damnation with her family over serving God.
“god did so many horrible things to me, i cannot say that sincerely. i don't want to serve god in any way, not even rhetorically.”
Works invoked 14
Life is Beautiful film
Žižek critiques the film's ending as sentimental and 'screwing everything up,' proposing a more desperate alternative where the son knows the truth.
Žižek's own documentary (2012, dir. Sophie Fiennes); he refers to filming a segment in Death Valley, self-deprecatingly calling it 'disgusting' for using his face. ASR renders as 'perverse guide to ideology in a valley of death'; corrected to full title on high confidence.
Freud's 1930s study on the decline of paternal authority.
The Trial book
Kafka's novel; the priest's advice to Joseph K ('it's not true, but it's necessary') illustrates the cynical stance Žižek rejects.
The Rapture film
A movie with Mimi Rogers where the protagonist refuses to serve God, exemplifying 'Christian atheism'.
Amazon adaptation of the Dick novel; the series Assange and Žižek discussed during their prison meeting, the occasion for Assange's structural reading.
Julian Assange's book defining Google as a 'private version of the NSA'; Žižek calls it Assange's most subversive and undernoticed work, more important than the early WikiLeaks document releases. Title inferred from description with high confidence.
The Iliad book
Cited for opening with 'rage,' which Žižek links to the current return of force/reich in European civilization.
A short text by Hannah Arendt quoted by Žižek to illustrate the failure of modern parental authority and the 'washing of hands' of responsibility.
Žižek is 'delighted' by the host's book, which argues that without the Haitian Revolution, the French Revolution would have been a local event.
The Holy Scripture book
Referenced regarding the apocalyptic belief that Jews must take over the Holy Land before Armageddon.
Alexander Mitscherlich's 1966 book, influential on Žižek, analyzing the disintegration of paternal authority.
The Second Mother film
Žižek prefers this film (misspoken as 'Valentim' or 'Lena wertmüller') for its 'desperate' and 'serious' portrayal, contrasting it with Life is Beautiful.
WikiLeaks documents other
The early WikiLeaks document releases; Žižek says these matter but are less important than Assange's book on Google as the core of Assange's political contribution.
People invoked 70
Fidel Castro positive
Listed alongside Mandela and Chavez as historical exemplars confirming Žižek's thesis that radical left regimes always depend on a charismatic leader.
Liliana Cavani positive
Žižek prefers her film (likely referring to The Night Porter or another work, though he misspeaks as 'Pasqualino sete bellette' and 'Lena wertmüller') for being more 'desperate' and 'serious' than Life is Beautiful.
Philip K. Dick positive
Author of 'The Man in the High Castle'; Assange shared with Žižek a reading of the TV adaptation that found a structurally repressed third point of reference, which Žižek found intellectually compelling.
Roberto Benigni negative
Director of Life is Beautiful; Žižek critiques the film's ending as 'screwing everything up' with sentimentality.
Udi Aloni positive
Described as 'my good friend'; keeps Žižek informed about a situation described as 'worse than nightmare', contextually about Palestine/Israel given the surrounding audience exchange.
Valentim positive
Likely referring to the director of The Second Mother (Anna Muylaert), though Žižek misspeaks the name. He praises the film for its desperate seriousness.
Blaise Pascal positive
Lacan's reading of Pascal is used to define 'true atheism' as refusing to serve God even if He exists.
Described as a secular nationalist who protected Christians and an educated women-inclusive middle class; the US destruction of his Ba'athist apparatus is cited as a catastrophic blunder opening Iraq to Iran and fundamentalism.
Rebecca Comay positive
Female Hegel scholar whose work Žižek appreciates.
Edward Snowden positive
Presented sympathetically as someone who did not choose Russian exile but was refused by China, Latin America, and every European country; his predicament illustrates Western hypocrisy about freedom.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Referenced via the NEP (New Economic Policy) as an example of a radical leader who immediately changed economic course after the October Revolution victory, the historical model Linera consciously drew on.
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Pointed out that Hitler and Stalin are not paternal figures but 'obscene masters' or 'primordial fathers'.
Jacques Lacan positive
Žižek disagrees with Lacan's later 'as if' stance (via Miller) but praises Lacan's reading of Pascal on 'Christian atheism'.
Francis Fukuyama negative
Žižek met him, finds him 'honest,' notes he no longer believes in the end of history and supports Bernie Sanders, but uses his 'Fukuyamaist vision' as a foil for the current crisis.
Mike Davis positive
Cited with regret as 'the guy who unfortunately died now'; his analysis of South Texas Mexican-Americans showed class interest cutting across ethnic solidarity, which Žižek uses to illustrate immigration complexity.
Cited in the context of the 2000 Florida election and the breakdown of procedural acceptance.
'It was bad under Gaddafi, but what we have now is probably even worse', Libya as failed state after Western intervention; used to illustrate the costs of humanitarian interventionism.
Cited as Indian-British PM 'much more to the right' than Boris Johnson, as part of the fake diversity / Tory co-optation of minorities argument.
Toussaint Louverture positive
Cited as a key figure in the Haitian Revolution; Žižek respects the 'beautiful collaboration' and 'fraternity' of the revolution.
Cited for granting citizenship to illegal immigrants to weaken the working class.
Judith Butler negative
Respectfully but firmly disagreed with on ecology: Butler's call to recognise humans as 'only one of the species' is held to be catastrophically wrong, precisely to save nature we must act as planetary managers.
Donald Trump negative
Cited for calling Haiti a 'shithole of a country'; Žižek uses this to highlight the absurdity of Western attitudes.
Mimi Rogers positive
Actress in the movie 'Rapture'; Žižek uses her character's refusal to serve God as an example of 'Christian atheism'.
Álvaro García Linera positive
Personal friend; Žižek calls him 'a genius' and endorses his model of principled pragmatism in managing Bolivia's economy under Morales. ASR renders as 'linara'/'linera'; corrected to full name.
Rosi Braidotti positive
Puerto Rican Hegel scholar (transcribed as 'roio zambrana' or similar) who wrote a radical left critique of liberal Hegelianism.
Her government, most right-wing in modern British history, included a female PM, an Indian-origin PM, and a Black chancellor; used as key example of fake diversity. ASR renders as 'L str'; corrected on high-confidence basis.
Étienne Balibar positive
Identified the crux of the anarchist problem: the ability to realize self-government through cooperatives and towns.
Emmanuel Macron negative
Cited for inviting Yellow Vest protesters to negotiations, which failed because they 'didn't speak the same language'.
Elon Musk negative
Used as an example of 'neo-feudalism' and the 'privatization of the commons'; Žižek calls his actions 'obscene' and jokes about executing him.
Frederick II of Prussia positive
Historical example of a master justifying rule by proclaiming himself the 'first servant of the state'.
Fredric Jameson positive
Cited as a friend who identified predestination as the most interesting theological notion for a Marxist.
Adolf Hitler negative
Described not as a paternal figure but as an 'obscene master' or 'primordial father'.
Mentioned as someone Fukuyama supports.
Julian Assange positive
Personal friend; Žižek met him in prison, praises his unbroken spirit, and endorses his key thesis (Google = private NSA) as the most subversive and undernoticed WikiLeaks contribution. Decries the British authorities' treatment as a scandal.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva positive
Offered as exemplar of the authentic radical left in Brazil, part of the Latin American wave Žižek admires, acknowledged with 'all the criticism of lula and so on'.
Mentioned only to note that people close to (but not) Zelensky protested the Nobel Peace Prize being shared with Belarusian and Russian figures, Žižek calls this 'madness'.
Evo Morales positive
Used as example of successful radical left leadership; treated with affectionate irreverence ('sits there, smokes coke, whatever') as symbolic figurehead managed by Linera.
Catherine Malabou positive
Hegel scholar and feminist; Žižek appreciates her work and credits her with overturning him to feminism.
Alexander Dugin negative
Cited as the Russian nationalist ideologue whose framework of 'Russian truth versus European truth' is being inadvertently replicated by some Ukrainians who want to stigmatise all Russians, Žižek warns this is a losing move.
Cited as giving Putin the title 'chief exorcist' and redefining the Ukraine war goal as 'desatanization'.
Peter Sloterdijk positive
Žižek likes him ('not an idiot'), cites his distinction between objective and subjective social democracy.
Göran Therborn positive
Swedish Marxist invited by Afghan theater groups; represents the intellectual engagement with desperate situations.
Jacques Rancière positive
Asserts radical equality between citizens who can command and obey, a view Malabou references regarding anarchism.
Maluku positive
Cited for her intelligent argument about the coexistence of de facto and dawning anarchism in current capitalism.
Napoleon negative
Described as brutal for sending armies to recapture Haiti, killing slaves, and imposing financial punishment; his soldiers are noted for switching sides.
Jacques-Alain Miller negative
Lacan's son-in-law; Žižek rejects Miller's call for a 'cynical stance' where we act 'as if' the law works, arguing this cynicism fails.
Hannah Arendt positive
Žižek has 'big problems' with her generally but quotes her text on education regarding parental authority to illustrate the failure of modern authority.
Reinhard Heydrich negative
Nazi official who wrote in 1937 that Jews are creative and should be supported in Palestine but kept out of Germany.
Mentioned as not being recognized as a legal president by 60-70% of Republican party members.
Hillary Clinton negative
Implicitly criticised as the establishment candidate whose campaign used identity politics against Sanders rather than engaging on substance.
Cited as Saddam's Iraqi Christian foreign minister, illustrating Ba'athist secularism. ASR transcribes as 'tariq kaziz'; corrected to Tariq Aziz on high-confidence basis (he was the only Iraqi Christian FM under Saddam).
Homer positive
Cited for the Iliad opening with 'rage,' which Žižek links to the current return of force/reich.
Alexander Mitscherlich positive
Frankfurt School psychoanalyst; his 1966 book 'On the Way to Society Without Fathers' influenced Žižek's understanding of the loss of paternal authority.
Niels Bohr positive
Subject of a joke about keeping a horseshoe for luck despite not believing in it, illustrating ideological cynicism.
Margaret Thatcher negative
Žižek says 'I hate her' but credits her 'genius' in recognising newly rich Indian-British voters Labour took for granted, used as illustration of how the right co-opts minorities and a warning to the left.
Cited as example of a Black African British chancellor with the most extreme right-wing economic policy (cutting top tax rate from 45% to 25%), illustrating fake anti-racism. ASR renders as 'kwartung'; corrected on high-confidence basis.
Barack Obama positive
Cited for his 'Yes, we can' message, which Žižek sees as the message of an 'authentic leader' who pushes citizens into freedom, though Žižek was critical of Obama personally.
Jürgen Habermas negative
Žižek calls him the 'ultimate left Fukuyama' for accepting the liberal democratic order as the best possible and welcoming 'catch-up revolutions' rather than challenging basic premises.
Max Horkheimer positive
Frankfurt School founder who, in the 1930s, argued that the decline of paternal authority enables moral autonomy.
Vladimir Putin negative
Described as leading a Russia whose ideology echoes Western populism; Žižek fears a deal between Trump and Putin/fundamentalists.
Nelson Mandela positive
Cited as a 'proper leader' whose 'Yes, we can' message pushed people to break down apartheid.
Referenced as the figure whose march/organisation Sanders supported as a young man, used to rebut the identity-politics framing of Sanders as an 'old white man'.
Benjamin Libet positive
Described as a 'genius' and a 'good jewish hegian'; his experiment on neural determinism is used to argue for the 'zero level of freedom' (the ability to block/sabotage).
Used ironically as 'big brother Chavez', the centralised state that simultaneously enabled local democracy, to rebut Venezuelan advocates of pure local community self-governance.
Joseph Stalin negative
Described not as a paternal figure but as an 'obscene master' or 'primordial father'.
Noam Chomsky positive
Revivalist of anarchism; Žižek agrees with Chomsky that US withdrawal from the Kurds was a mistake.
Paul the Apostle positive
Cited by pseudo-Lacanians to argue that enjoyment is transgressive and requires the violation of prohibitions.
Sigmund Freud positive
Freud identified the ambiguous decline of paternal authority; Žižek uses Freud's concept of the 'primordial father' (Urvater) to analyze modern dictators.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Noted that judges are selected by lot (jury) to ensure decisions are made by people equal to the accused, avoiding authoritarian expert rule.
Used as an example of the gap between popular sentiment (most hated) and political victory.
Transcript 116 turns
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
welcome. thank you guys for coming. it's just really nice to see so many students and friends and colleagues. my name is jeremy. i'm an associate professor in the english department here at hunter college. it's great to be back at the roosevelt house. you guys did this amazing audrey lord conference, and we had a departmental retreat here once. so i just wanted to, before we begin, thank president rabab, maha haroun in the president's office, peter skafani and the staff for the roosevelt house. they really helped me to situate logistics for this event, and my dean antip polky for encouraging me to ask for such help. i want to extend gratitude to our distinguished guest, what some of you might call an og, my comrade savoy jac for.
welcome. thank you guys for coming. it's just really nice to see so many students and friends and colleagues. my name is jeremy. i'm an associate professor in the english department here at hunter college. it's great to be back at the roosevelt house. you guys did this amazing audrey lord conference, and we had a departmental retreat here once. so i just wanted to, before we begin, thank president rabab, maha haroun in the president's office, peter skafani and the staff for the roosevelt house. they really helped me to situate logistics for this event, and my dean antip polky for encouraging me to ask for such help. i want to extend gratitude to our distinguished guest, what some of you might call an og, my comrade savoy jac for.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah
yeah
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
g, gee, gee. i agree. yeah. now, something. okay. uh... anyway, i wanted to thank sloy for volunteering this afternoon. we did this once at bcc a few years ago, and now it's hunter's turn. it's a real mark of his generosity to volunteer so much to the cuny communities. my classes this term, who are somewhere around, we've been reading sloy's version of antigone, a text that according to gizac, quote, doesn't present to be a work of art, but an ethico-political exercise.
g, gee, gee. i agree. yeah. now, something. okay. uh... anyway, i wanted to thank sloy for volunteering this afternoon. we did this once at bcc a few years ago, and now it's hunter's turn. it's a real mark of his generosity to volunteer so much to the cuny communities. my classes this term, who are somewhere around, we've been reading sloy's version of antigone, a text that according to gizac, quote, doesn't present to be a work of art, but an ethico-political exercise.
Slavoj Žižek
right.
right.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
your text, yeah.
your text, yeah.
Slavoj Žižek
and so we'll be having some...
and so we'll be having some...
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
we'll be having some sort of political eth exercise this afternoon, and we're very excited for it. we also, this semester have been looking at jizac's take on akira kurosawa's hamlet film, the blade sleep well. tonight, however, as you know, our focus is on the crises of our current political moment. at the end, if there's time, i have a few questions for savoy, and then we'll open it up to student queries. so this will be brief. it's only one more paragraph. walter benjamin, stealing the conceptual goods away from carl schmidt, famously reminds us that, quote, the tradition of the oppressed teach us that the state of emergency in which we live is not the exception but the rule. today's historical impasse is one heck of an exception in rule. the atavistic right branch of the ruling class answers the aggressive unorings and deprivations of capital with xenophobia, stochastic terrorism, conspiracy theory, what gacques's friend frederick jameson calls the poor man's cognitive mapping, and a cynical disavowal of history that purposely confuses naming with the very systemic oppression that name refers to, as well as the ruthless and powerful ironanoid dehumanization of lgbt folk, and recently stripping half the country of bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom. meanwhile, the other side, in bad faith, finally have come around to the fact that the electoral college wasn't a swell idea. i submit that the bourgeoisie in the united states of america should be forced to submit and read and write very long dissertations on w.b. boy' black reconstruction in america, which has something to say about that topic. what gac calls the liberal elite runs rhetorical hamster wheels to exclude from their imperative evocation of fascism its structural, economic, jingoistic, and capitalist component, anything but name the structural roots of the problem. slavoy's scholarship is so vast. a short but very incomplete list includes his commentaries on cybernetics, frederick schelling's philosophy, a positively brilliant small branch on psychoanalysis, wagner and opera, his work on sexuality in the void, new global economic, ecological, and medical fissures for struggle, the kol nidre prayer as a lens to think about antigone, jane austen, and edith w. in novels, hegelian dialectics as a framework to think about various liberation struggles, bjork on film, and for me personally and most influentially, his brilliant readings of robespierre and lenin that confront soberly and rigorously their theoretical work and radical praxis. neither, or rather always neither reductive nor romantic, gac reads revolutions from within and not from without. james baldwin in his last text succinctly writes in the evidence of things not seen, quote, the present social and political apparatus cannot serve human need, end quote. against such a disheartening impasse, jacques's work makes room. it opens up a clearing. it plants down some potatoes and carrots, suggesting new possibilities. it's my pleasure to welcome him to roosevelt house and hunter college.
we'll be having some sort of political eth exercise this afternoon, and we're very excited for it. we also, this semester have been looking at jizac's take on akira kurosawa's hamlet film, the blade sleep well. tonight, however, as you know, our focus is on the crises of our current political moment. at the end, if there's time, i have a few questions for savoy, and then we'll open it up to student queries. so this will be brief. it's only one more paragraph. walter benjamin, stealing the conceptual goods away from carl schmidt, famously reminds us that, quote, the tradition of the oppressed teach us that the state of emergency in which we live is not the exception but the rule. today's historical impasse is one heck of an exception in rule. the atavistic right branch of the ruling class answers the aggressive unorings and deprivations of capital with xenophobia, stochastic terrorism, conspiracy theory, what gacques's friend frederick jameson calls the poor man's cognitive mapping, and a cynical disavowal of history that purposely confuses naming with the very systemic oppression that name refers to, as well as the ruthless and powerful ironanoid dehumanization of lgbt folk, and recently stripping half the country of bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom. meanwhile, the other side, in bad faith, finally have come around to the fact that the electoral college wasn't a swell idea. i submit that the bourgeoisie in the united states of america should be forced to submit and read and write very long dissertations on w.b. boy' black reconstruction in america, which has something to say about that topic. what gac calls the liberal elite runs rhetorical hamster wheels to exclude from their imperative evocation of fascism its structural, economic, jingoistic, and capitalist component, anything but name the structural roots of the problem. slavoy's scholarship is so vast. a short but very incomplete list includes his commentaries on cybernetics, frederick schelling's philosophy, a positively brilliant small branch on psychoanalysis, wagner and opera, his work on sexuality in the void, new global economic, ecological, and medical fissures for struggle, the kol nidre prayer as a lens to think about antigone, jane austen, and edith w. in novels, hegelian dialectics as a framework to think about various liberation struggles, bjork on film, and for me personally and most influentially, his brilliant readings of robespierre and lenin that confront soberly and rigorously their theoretical work and radical praxis. neither, or rather always neither reductive nor romantic, gac reads revolutions from within and not from without. james baldwin in his last text succinctly writes in the evidence of things not seen, quote, the present social and political apparatus cannot serve human need, end quote. against such a disheartening impasse, jacques's work makes room. it opens up a clearing. it plants down some potatoes and carrots, suggesting new possibilities. it's my pleasure to welcome him to roosevelt house and hunter college.
Audience Member
i'm really glad.
i'm really glad.
Slavoj Žižek
and sorry, i hope this works. i'm really glad and proud to be here. let me just begin by improvising just a little bit as a reply to you. you know, it's very interesting how we met. i think that, not physically, but spiritually. i think that it was that you gave me wrote your book on haiti, toussaint l'ouverture, and so on, which i always see, you see, this is how my travel politically. i know we in west are eurocentric imperialists and so on, but unfortunately i don't believe in this simplistic idea that back eurocentrism let's rely on some local traditions as a resistance to western. for example, some of my friends in brazil claim that they know a tribe deep in amazonia who maybe offers the model for how to organize life today. no, i think that the task is still. to bring what is the best in european tradition, enlightenment and so on, but to read it through third world experiences, that's the only way to. achieve actual universality and as i wrote and i was delighted by your. book along these lines you know that i claim that without haiti revolution, french revolution would have been basically a local french event. it's only through repetition in haiti that french revolution really became a global. event now, some... anti-european critics claim that you see, you are always eurocentrist as if the only way for us in latin america, africa is nonetheless to repeat europe. and here... i introduced in a short text on this the term dislocation. it's not simply applying european notions. what was meant with equality and so on was substantially changed. in in haiti revolution. and if there is, i think you also report on it, but i read books on it, isn't this the most beautiful collaboration in the sense of fraternity, common struggle. you know the story of haiti. jacob brings all the glory to them. they immediately fully recognized toussaint louverture the new haiti regime. then napoleon came. he turned the tide completely. he sent his army there trying to recapture haiti and napoleon was very brutal here. he even wrote that it went so far that it's not enough just to reintroduce slavery. all the slaves there has to be killed and new slaves brought from africa. it'scredible. you know the story. the black army won over the french. army. it's incredible. but you know who and they were absolutely respected all the time in haiti. it's a beautiful story. i hope you know it. you know who was one of the key factors there in the black victory? napoleon sent a strong... a strong part of his army were polish soldiers. and when the white army was approaching, the black army, they heard some strange songs and they thought, they're probably singing some stupid tribal songs or whatever. when they came close, they heard. the black army was singing marseillaise and they did something heroic. the polish soldiers say, wait a minute, aren't we here on the wrong side? and change sites and even when. afterwork. after toussaint l'ouverture death, it it haiti guys went too far and ordered the killing of all white people they exempted. the polish people and are you aware, sorry to remind you of this. what price haiti paid? to be allowed in early 1820, to be allowed to be included again into world economy. haitaiti het. to pay. to france. basically for their own freedom what france lost them. and we are not talking about some 1,2 percent you know that. most of the 19th century, haiti had to give to france as a financial punishment. 60 to 80 percent of their entire state. this this was kind of a symbolic punishment. you went too far. you did your revolution when you shouldn't have done it. now comes another beautiful shock. we will say, yeah, yeah, 19th century. you know when haiti paid the last installment to france? 1946, even after like the west wanted to make it absolutely sure that this will be failure when people talk about universal values multiculturalism true universality this is the case so i cannot wait what you will. bring out now as just another reaction to you when you mentioned theesh today no we are in such a crazy predicament. like just to give you one point that i often repeat, as most of you probably even in may, as your beloved president, ex-trump would have said, shit hole of a country, slovenia, we watched the 6th of january last year. what happens there... many of my leftist friends were crying. you know why? because the scene is the realization of their dream. my god, the crowd is occupying. the sheet of power. but then they cried but we should have been doing this. that's the problem today you know we are in a deep mess and what i will try to do is just to i'm sorry if it will be a little bit boring i ran out of my dirty jokes in q&a you can ask me but then you will be responsible for what you get. you know like tell us enough of theory tell me some dirty joke i will try to be more. okay, let so let me begin. maybe you know this, my latest discovery. i even didn't know what this is. you know what is copy luvak? is the world's most expensive coffee. it is literally made from poop. from coffee beans that are partially digested and then pooped out by a shivet, a cat-like creature that lives in southeast asia and sub-saharan africa. cet's digestive enzymes change the structure of proteins in the coffee beans, which removes some of the acidity to make a smoother cup of coffee. my point is that, if i may begin with this slightly obscene metaphor, that today's new right populist ideology is a kind of ideological copy luvak. the, some of them even respectable, like the critique of financial elites exploiting ordinary people, are processed by today's right-wing apes and turned into shit. i will give you a concrete example. out of my utter perversity, sometimes you should do it to see what's the problem today. i listen sometimes to what one rumor, what's the title, that sorry even to. this is super. yeah. i was even invited, i don't want, i'm not so crazy, to go to his. no, no, no, no, that's too much for me. and i remember listening to some of his podcasts that... you know that they begin. in an almost leftist way, she attacks big companies, blah blah blah, and then comes the, after the first 20 minutes now, then comes the... the populist turn, but turn, but to go to the end. what? the noblest liberal democratic ideology, often also not processed by our civets to legitimize global capitalist exploitation and humanitarian military intervention. we are all in this shit, not only up to our knees, but, if i'm allowed to use my last tasteless metaphor, up to our up to our asses. the world is really getting crazy today in the sense that you know what's my fear? i repeated the last day always this point. uh how? i'm sorry if this offends some of you. i'm pro-ukrainian. but how the ideology of putin's russia echo today's right-wing populism in the west. uh. first, they all focus on these new forms of sexuality, lgbt plus gay rights, whatever, abortion, they focus on this is the ultimate root of our... traders, don't underestimate this. this is... you cannot say these are just words. really there are economic interests and so on. for example, do you know what happened a week ago in russia? patriarch kiril, the boss of russian orthodox churchirk, gave a new title on putin, which is the chief exorcist. and they officially in... kremlin now redefined the goal of intervention in. in ukraine s, they claim it's no longer to say denazification, now it's des-satanization. they claim that ukraine is just. the edge of what goes in western europe, satan is in... power there it's much worse or even nonetheless similar to your american so what i fear, sorry, from my narrow european interests is in the elections you have now. this tuesday and then two years from now, you know. east. trump. or trumpisch. we i think that they will. definitely make a kind of a deal with all the new fundamentalists, putin and so on and so on, and it will be the nightmare of a new world. what went wrong? now comes, i'm sorry, a little bit the boring part. as peter slterdeijk, the german philosopher who is not exactly a right left winger, but he's not an idiot. i like him. he pointed out that at the very mythic of course beginning of european civilization there is homer's iliad, which as you probably know opens with the lines on wrathath, rage, like one translation, rage goddess, seeing the rage of peleus' son achilles, murderers doomed. that had caused the achaeans countless losses and so on so at the beginning it's rage and today at the end, reich is returning. force. how? now comes, i'm sorry, the boring part. and i mean it seriously. this is not a rhetorical offer. if at any point... you find something not clearly formulated and so on. you are... sincerely. inv to interrupt me, like, could you please just clarify this and so on. it's why i'm saying it's not just a formal offer, because i wrote long texts on it. i think if you ask me what is the zero level of civilization, it's precisely this kind of a pure rhetoricics when you offer something without expecting that the other guy will accept your offer. like, do you have it also here? in europe we have i love it because in my evil mind i often exploit it just to embarrass my friends. you know, like let's say but it's not true. i have more money than my friend. i invite him to dinner. then when the bill comes, it's clear to both of us that i will pay. but we have this good manners that the other guy should insist for a minute or more let us split or let and then we play this game but we both know that my friend made an offer to be rejected now you can already guess with my primordial balkan evil what i like to do i say as a rule okay if you want you pay and then this is a catastrophe of course you know because the guy says oh my god i forgot my credit card we have to go through all this stuff now you will say this is an extreme case. it's not. is this not, it's not even totalitarian. the basic form of, let's call it ideological identification. to accept an that something that you are obliged to do. at the same time, you are. i put it like this, sorry, i try not to get lost. the pure formula is you are given a free choice on condition that you make the right choice. so i will not get lost into it. i will just say that we in the last 100 years, maybe less in the west. and i don't mean it in an ironic way. listen, to annoy many of my leftist friends, i say that... till now, european union was a kind of a miracle. i will tell you something very pathetic. yeah, there was still colonialism, up and down racism, but... i don't think there was an epoch in the entire history of humanity where such a large number of population lived in such a relative welfare, freedom, safety than in western europe, basically social democratic welfare state. and here i will again quote slijk, a conservative who introduced a wonderful distinction between objective and subjective social democracy. the guy in whose house we are sitting now, she was, although this wasn't called like that, she was in some sense an... let's cut the long story short. he was the closest the united states came to some kind of social democracy. but what we got in europe, but now it's being gradually dismantled, also in the united states, it's what slterijk calls objective social democracy, which means the basic social democratic values, the idea that society state had to provide for free education, healthcare and so on, which is simply part part of the basic social pact. even it gains an independence towards with regard to elections. like i remember, this was beautiful. in sweden, there was in the 60s, before the golden age of social democracy. then, i don't know where, late 60s, early 70s, palmer party, ol of palmer's social democracy lost. and some liberal, moderately conservative their opponents, other side, gained power. we were all afraid. oh my god, will they dismantle? no, they went in nationalization even further. you see, this is the true triumph, that ultimately it's not even important who wins, because elections because basic social democratic values are already part of the basic social pact. this is being... put under threat today. how? in his interpretation of the fall of east european communism, jürgen habermas. proved to be, i think, the ultimate left fukuyama is. fukuyama is referring to, you know, fukuyama at the end of his story and so on and so on. habermas silently accepts that the existing liberal democratic order is the best one possible and that while we should strive to make it more just, we should not challenge its basic premises. this is shai. he welcomed. when communism fell apart in late 80s, early 90s, habermas welcomed precisely what many leftists saw as the big deficiency of the anti-communist protests in eastern europe. the fact that these protests were not motivated by any new vision of a post-communist future these protests... kind of pseudo-revolutions where they were just... habermas calls them like this, rectifying or catch-up revolutions. in german, nachhollende. their aim was just to enable those societies to gain what the western europeans already bcht. and... the ongoing wave of protest. in western europe itself. tend to question this very basic liberal democratic frame. you remember the yellow vests in france. podemos, other protests in spain and so on. they are definitely not just catch-up movements. they embody the weird reversal that characterizes today's global situation. the old antagonism between ordinary people and financial capitalist elites is back with a vengeance, with ordinary people erupting in protest against the elites. however, what is new is that. the populist right. has proved to be much more adept in channeling this rage. in the direction in its own direction much more. adapt than the left al but you. was justified to say apropos the french protests, it's a nice french phrase, tout ce qui bouge n'est pas rouge. all that moves makes unrest is not red. there can be also movement coming from the other side. so uh... uh what i remember my first perception of this. i remember, i think it was in 2005, maybe i'm wrong, sorry, the last elections won by... tonny blair. lour party in england i remember i was by chance giving some classes in london and i saw quite by chance i almost don't watch tv some kind of a popular show. where. people were electing the most unpopular person in england. tony blair won. by the most hated person. what is so sad? two weeks after, in elections, tony blair won. so obviously this gap is very dangerous. we have some level of basic popular discontent. and it is impossible to translate it transpose it into the existing. party political, however you call it, frame. it was the same. i'm not here lost in details. this is, i think, a very dangerous phenomenon. it was the same, i don't really remember when this happened, some three years ago, gilet the yellow vest in france. tremendous movement and so on. then macron did something that an honest liberal. should do he invited them to negotiations and so on and it was very tragic to listen to it they simply couldn't find. points of agreement like they didn't speak the same language. but i don't put, now the thing to avoid here is the populist solution, claiming, yes, macron stood for the alienated state machinery. he didn't wasn't able to really listen to the people. but it's much more complex. because if you look at what the protesters demanded, it was a strange, inconsistent mixture of very pragmatic popular demands. like lower the price of gasoline and so on, all that stuff and up to racist demand less immigrants they many working people in france experience immigrants as unfair competition. and there is some truth in it, which is why, remember, this is crucial, that when bush the younger, i think, was president, it was he, not a democratic president, who gave, i think, citizenship to two million of illegal mexican, latin americanans, and so on and so on, for obvious reasons. the idea is... in this way, there will be the working class will have less influence, more competition and so on and so on. so i think that this is the gap we are all experiencing today. and our societies here with you, but also in europe, are dangerously approaching a kind of a, let's call it, new civil war. for the time being, it's not yet. armed conflict, but it's getting close to that. for example, look at what is happening at your place. democracy the way we know it. is characterized by two things. not only. the voice of the majority, blah blah, but also... and i like this aspect is crucial for. functioning democracy unconditional proceduralism you know you can say the elections were manipulated blah blah but once the numbers are here all sides accept them. like you remember al gore versus it was bush i think no you remember how it was probably manipulated all those what was it 400 votes in florida. but nonetheless, when the final verdict did came, all sides accepted it. this game is over. do you know that i think some 60, 70 percent of your republican party members think that biden is not a legal president? and so on. this is extremely dangerous, this idea. and this is typically how. without being directly revolutionary, conservative revolutionary, you manipulate mechanisms. like, you know, you have this minor proposal which was never used. subdivision of a law, how do you call it, that here in the states, if the situation of elections in a state is not clear blah blah, then in an extreme case the congress of a state, one of the state can directly nominate electoral blah blah blah. but now the plan of republicans is to to widen the scope of this so that that's why republicans now don't want so much the majority, i think, direct in congress or senate, but to gain as many states as possible. and then in two years next election, to simply play this game. democrats won, some republicans will say it was a mess, it's not clear and they're congress, state congress will do what it do. my problem here is that i don't buy the simple populist solution, which is get this. we need to abolish alienated politics and introduce some more authentic democracy and so on and so on. it's not, i think, the gap is the gap is irreducible. so again, how did we come to this? now i come to the central, very problematic, i hope for some of you, part. there is a general narrative gradually emerging, a narrative on what is going on in the last decades. in western countries. to cut a long story short, it is the return of what was repressed in the age of modernity and enlightenment. uh it it's not just. it's not just the other side of enlightenment, but also the antagonism which runs through enlightenment is becoming more and more visible. what do i mean by this? the dissatisfaction with the hegemonic ideological coordinates our spontaneous liberal democratic ideology, let's call it the fukuyama ideal. and i don't make too much more than it's necessary fan of fukuyama because you know, i met him once. he's quite an honest guy. he no longer is a fukuyamaist. he no longer believes in the end of history. last i i learned from him is that he supports bernie sanders. he was honest here. so again, uh we... what we are getting is... this fukuyamaist vision of liberal, almost social democratic welfare state is more and more accompanied by its dark fed. the obscenity of the populist discourse. permitted by racist and sexist. enjoyment. we are learning the hard way that the attempt of modernity to dispense with traditional forms of domination, father of the family, master and so on, and install secular democracy failed. the dimension of the master is returning with a vengeance in all its forms, patriarchal values, political authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism. and and so on and so on. it was clear already to freud that the decline of the paternal authority this is a thing not popular to say today, is an ambiguous process. father as a figure of moral authority, nonetheless enables the child to adopt a stance of moral autonomy, resisting the pressure of his its peers and the pressure of the corrupted social environment. following freud in his study, back in 1930s, in his study on authority and family, max horkheimer, the founder of the frankfurt school, made the same point. while, in the same spirit, adorno pointed out that one has to repeat this endlessly. that neither hitler nor stalin are in any sense paternal figures. they're a new form of obscene master if you already want. translation, but they are not quite adequate. in freudian terms, it is more something like urvater, you know, this freudian myth of the primordial father who is brutal master exploiting all directly possessing all women and so on and so on. it is translated into english. this was one of the big books which influenced me when i was young. alexander mzerlich, frankfurt school orient and psychoanalyst published in 1966. very important book auf dem weg zur vaterlosen gesellschaft on the way to society without fathers, where he analyzes in detail the process of the loss disintegration of paternal authority and how it gives birth to new forms of domination. now, the obvious answer to this crisis is but we don't need authorities. people themselves should reign. but here... oui. encounter a problem. in today's populism, the dark, obscene side of the reference to the people made itself palpable. the people to which populism refers doesn't exist. populism is by definition a mask of power. it is a fantasized entity evoked by new masters to justify their role as the servants of the people. enabling them to dismiss their opponents as the enemies of the people. the first step towards populism was made centuries ago. when. to counter the loss of traditional authority work. the leader king refers to go church tradition, the leader proclaimed himself a servant. for example, in germany. friedrich der grosse, frederick the great, defined himself as the first servant of state and his people. and this is how, from the early enlightenment onwards, a master justifies his rule. he is in reality the greatest servant, the servant of all his subjects servants. there are, of course, different modalities of this position of serving the servants. from techn, technocratic experts to religious fundamentalism to obscene clowns, master clown like donald trump. the obscene master is not a direct reaction to the failure of the traditional master. this figure is a reaction to the fact that the expert knowledge cannot properly function at the place of the agent of a social link, it has to be supplemented by a new obscene figure. now, the reaction to this predicament is double. we can reluctantly accept. the need to return to some form of social authority, since if the symbolic law, name of the father, loses its authority, desire itself van. that's unfortunately even a very popular position among some, i hate them, pseudo, i claim, lachenians. they claim, let's face it. the decline of paternal authority doesn't mean, oh, no father to limit us, we get full enjoyment. it means since our enjoyment is, so they claim, following st. paul, by definition transgressive. there is no enjoyment without violating prohibitions. if you lose the authority, prohibitive authority, you lose enjoyment itself. you enter depression, apathy and so on. and they usually quote the fact, which is an important fact, that in today's society with all the permissiveness what we get is... a much tighter. control, regulation in different forms, either right-wing or left-wing politically correct. categorization. so again, the idea is that when paternal authority disintegrates, what we get is so-called pathological narcissism. so that father is no longer an external authority, but simply your competitor. we get this obscene social situation. so the solution is we should go back, restore some kind of paternal authority or symbolic law as the agent of... prohibition. i. of course i reject. this. but then... uh. in his last years, and i disagree with lacon here, he was playing with another idea, unfortunately taken over by his, i'm always lost, what is your daughter's husband to you? son-in-law, his son-in-law, sorry? yes, milner brought this to the end. this idea which can be grounded in some laccon. fort formulations, but i don't think this is true laccon's position. miller calls for cynical stance. he says that since we cannot return to the authority of the law. what we can do is as if we sustain the law. like we know it doesn't work, but at the same time, the law, the authority, but at the same time, we know that without the law, there is chaos, social disintegration. so let's proceed in a cynical way. i don't believe in any foundation of the law, not even in democratic foundation, but let's act as if. the law works. here are two very sad quotes from miller. a psychoanalyst acts so that semblances the fake semblance of authority semblances remain at their places while making sure that the subjects under uh. peace. psychoanalysts care, do not take them as real. one should somehow bring oneself to remain taken in by them, fooled by them. so the axiom of cynical wisdom is that, again quote from miller, one should protect the semblances of power for the good reason that one should be able to continue to enjoy. the point is not to attach oneself to the semblances of the existing power, but to consider them necessary. so, the law. we should be aware that it's not true, it's a fake, but it's a necessary fake. now, you know kafka. i think you remember towards the end of the trial, this is what. the priest tells to joseph k, when joseph k explodes, but what you are telling is that god, the law is not true and that whatever the priest says, yes, it's not true, but it's necessary. so... i, of course. reject this way if for no other reason that i think it's that cynical distance. doesn't work in the sense that even if you subjectively think that you gained distance towards the law, there is more truth in how you act. pretending to believe in the law then. in your inner distance from it. and i have my own political experience here. you know who, i'm sorry, i will now do something horrible. don't be afraid, although, you know, i will say something just to annoy you. you know what he told me, my good friend before? he said, say whatever you want, just don't make fun of jews and not gay people. okay. i will follow that. i will follow that. although my god, my god you know, if you are not my friend, you know. okay, no, no, i will not. i respect it. but what i... uh. what i want to say is that. i, i will take my own example. yugoslavia. it was a perfect socialist country. i've written about it. maybe you know it, where somewhere from, i would say, 60s, 1960s onwards. it wasn't only that. even the bureaucracy, ruling class, communist bureaucracy, didn't believe in their own... ideology we went a step further. to make a career. in the central committee and so on, it was necessary not to take. the official ideology seriously. and i had a personal experience, not me, myself. i got two friends who were what one cannot but describe honest communists. they took all the yugoslav ideology, you know, against soviet bureaucratic socialism, we have self-management, democratic socialism, blah, blah. they took it seriously. they lost their post. because the ruling bureaucracy knew well that if you take the official ideology, seriously, is one step from dissidence. because then you will discover, my god, things are not really like that and so on. so, isn't this wonderful? again, be careful what i say. i'm not saying, just there is brutal power. it doesn't matter if you take it seriously or not. no, you have to have a cynical distance towards it for the power to function properly. so i don't believe that cyn works. can i repeat? an an old joke, very modest, don't give me yours. i repeat that i'm afraid you all know it. i used it for some time in all my lectures, but it fits perfectly here. nils b, my favorite, you know that eternal story that i repeat, he had a wooden hut somewhere in a forest close to copenhagen, and he had above the entrance a horseshoe. which is a superstitious item allegedly preventing evil spirits to enter the house. so a french scientist visits him and asked him, bor, why do you have this there? aren't you a scientist? i hope you don't believe in it. and bor gave a perfect marxist critico-ideological answer. he said, i'm not an idiot. i don't believe it. but i have it there because i was told that it works even if you don't believe in it. that's ideology today. that's the proper cynical approach. we don't believe in law order, justice and so on, but we enact it. now, the next... solution formula. why why? okay, i will nonetheless, i hope i cannot go. say something very positive about... the i hope no no no no no it will be very correct. you know what worries me most and you should agree with me here. the tendency that we see now which i cannot name but... zionist anti-seemitism by this i mean the following did you notice how wächter... right wingers. who are this extreme populists, are here in the states, in western europe, anti-semitic. but they support israel there. this is a very dangerous game and i seriously worry when the israeli government often accepts this game. and i know this from, you know who was the primordial father of all this? it's a horrible name. rit him. horrible name. you know, the holocaust. vater reinhard heidrich. he wrote in 37 a wonderful, wonderful with me means horrifying, text where he says, jews are incredibly creative people. but it's too much for us here in germany. if jews go to palestine, we will support him. they're great people. we will trade with them, just not here. the next guy did the same. do you remember some, now it's already over 10 years ago, braving that crazy norwegian who shot a norwegian friend sent me the translation of some of his texts where this guy said js are dangerous in the west. we should limit their influence. but there in palestine, we should fully support them because they are the last bastion of western civilization and so on and so on. all i'm saying, i hope we all agree, is that this is a very dangerous game. and it's incredible how some of the american religious fundamentalists support israel. but when you read their reasons, they are horrible. the main reason is that it says in some city stuff like that. what comes up here?
and sorry, i hope this works. i'm really glad and proud to be here. let me just begin by improvising just a little bit as a reply to you. you know, it's very interesting how we met. i think that, not physically, but spiritually. i think that it was that you gave me wrote your book on haiti, toussaint l'ouverture, and so on, which i always see, you see, this is how my travel politically. i know we in west are eurocentric imperialists and so on, but unfortunately i don't believe in this simplistic idea that back eurocentrism let's rely on some local traditions as a resistance to western. for example, some of my friends in brazil claim that they know a tribe deep in amazonia who maybe offers the model for how to organize life today. no, i think that the task is still. to bring what is the best in european tradition, enlightenment and so on, but to read it through third world experiences, that's the only way to. achieve actual universality and as i wrote and i was delighted by your. book along these lines you know that i claim that without haiti revolution, french revolution would have been basically a local french event. it's only through repetition in haiti that french revolution really became a global. event now, some... anti-european critics claim that you see, you are always eurocentrist as if the only way for us in latin america, africa is nonetheless to repeat europe. and here... i introduced in a short text on this the term dislocation. it's not simply applying european notions. what was meant with equality and so on was substantially changed. in in haiti revolution. and if there is, i think you also report on it, but i read books on it, isn't this the most beautiful collaboration in the sense of fraternity, common struggle. you know the story of haiti. jacob brings all the glory to them. they immediately fully recognized toussaint louverture the new haiti regime. then napoleon came. he turned the tide completely. he sent his army there trying to recapture haiti and napoleon was very brutal here. he even wrote that it went so far that it's not enough just to reintroduce slavery. all the slaves there has to be killed and new slaves brought from africa. it'scredible. you know the story. the black army won over the french. army. it's incredible. but you know who and they were absolutely respected all the time in haiti. it's a beautiful story. i hope you know it. you know who was one of the key factors there in the black victory? napoleon sent a strong... a strong part of his army were polish soldiers. and when the white army was approaching, the black army, they heard some strange songs and they thought, they're probably singing some stupid tribal songs or whatever. when they came close, they heard. the black army was singing marseillaise and they did something heroic. the polish soldiers say, wait a minute, aren't we here on the wrong side? and change sites and even when. afterwork. after toussaint l'ouverture death, it it haiti guys went too far and ordered the killing of all white people they exempted. the polish people and are you aware, sorry to remind you of this. what price haiti paid? to be allowed in early 1820, to be allowed to be included again into world economy. haitaiti het. to pay. to france. basically for their own freedom what france lost them. and we are not talking about some 1,2 percent you know that. most of the 19th century, haiti had to give to france as a financial punishment. 60 to 80 percent of their entire state. this this was kind of a symbolic punishment. you went too far. you did your revolution when you shouldn't have done it. now comes another beautiful shock. we will say, yeah, yeah, 19th century. you know when haiti paid the last installment to france? 1946, even after like the west wanted to make it absolutely sure that this will be failure when people talk about universal values multiculturalism true universality this is the case so i cannot wait what you will. bring out now as just another reaction to you when you mentioned theesh today no we are in such a crazy predicament. like just to give you one point that i often repeat, as most of you probably even in may, as your beloved president, ex-trump would have said, shit hole of a country, slovenia, we watched the 6th of january last year. what happens there... many of my leftist friends were crying. you know why? because the scene is the realization of their dream. my god, the crowd is occupying. the sheet of power. but then they cried but we should have been doing this. that's the problem today you know we are in a deep mess and what i will try to do is just to i'm sorry if it will be a little bit boring i ran out of my dirty jokes in q&a you can ask me but then you will be responsible for what you get. you know like tell us enough of theory tell me some dirty joke i will try to be more. okay, let so let me begin. maybe you know this, my latest discovery. i even didn't know what this is. you know what is copy luvak? is the world's most expensive coffee. it is literally made from poop. from coffee beans that are partially digested and then pooped out by a shivet, a cat-like creature that lives in southeast asia and sub-saharan africa. cet's digestive enzymes change the structure of proteins in the coffee beans, which removes some of the acidity to make a smoother cup of coffee. my point is that, if i may begin with this slightly obscene metaphor, that today's new right populist ideology is a kind of ideological copy luvak. the, some of them even respectable, like the critique of financial elites exploiting ordinary people, are processed by today's right-wing apes and turned into shit. i will give you a concrete example. out of my utter perversity, sometimes you should do it to see what's the problem today. i listen sometimes to what one rumor, what's the title, that sorry even to. this is super. yeah. i was even invited, i don't want, i'm not so crazy, to go to his. no, no, no, no, that's too much for me. and i remember listening to some of his podcasts that... you know that they begin. in an almost leftist way, she attacks big companies, blah blah blah, and then comes the, after the first 20 minutes now, then comes the... the populist turn, but turn, but to go to the end. what? the noblest liberal democratic ideology, often also not processed by our civets to legitimize global capitalist exploitation and humanitarian military intervention. we are all in this shit, not only up to our knees, but, if i'm allowed to use my last tasteless metaphor, up to our up to our asses. the world is really getting crazy today in the sense that you know what's my fear? i repeated the last day always this point. uh how? i'm sorry if this offends some of you. i'm pro-ukrainian. but how the ideology of putin's russia echo today's right-wing populism in the west. uh. first, they all focus on these new forms of sexuality, lgbt plus gay rights, whatever, abortion, they focus on this is the ultimate root of our... traders, don't underestimate this. this is... you cannot say these are just words. really there are economic interests and so on. for example, do you know what happened a week ago in russia? patriarch kiril, the boss of russian orthodox churchirk, gave a new title on putin, which is the chief exorcist. and they officially in... kremlin now redefined the goal of intervention in. in ukraine s, they claim it's no longer to say denazification, now it's des-satanization. they claim that ukraine is just. the edge of what goes in western europe, satan is in... power there it's much worse or even nonetheless similar to your american so what i fear, sorry, from my narrow european interests is in the elections you have now. this tuesday and then two years from now, you know. east. trump. or trumpisch. we i think that they will. definitely make a kind of a deal with all the new fundamentalists, putin and so on and so on, and it will be the nightmare of a new world. what went wrong? now comes, i'm sorry, a little bit the boring part. as peter slterdeijk, the german philosopher who is not exactly a right left winger, but he's not an idiot. i like him. he pointed out that at the very mythic of course beginning of european civilization there is homer's iliad, which as you probably know opens with the lines on wrathath, rage, like one translation, rage goddess, seeing the rage of peleus' son achilles, murderers doomed. that had caused the achaeans countless losses and so on so at the beginning it's rage and today at the end, reich is returning. force. how? now comes, i'm sorry, the boring part. and i mean it seriously. this is not a rhetorical offer. if at any point... you find something not clearly formulated and so on. you are... sincerely. inv to interrupt me, like, could you please just clarify this and so on. it's why i'm saying it's not just a formal offer, because i wrote long texts on it. i think if you ask me what is the zero level of civilization, it's precisely this kind of a pure rhetoricics when you offer something without expecting that the other guy will accept your offer. like, do you have it also here? in europe we have i love it because in my evil mind i often exploit it just to embarrass my friends. you know, like let's say but it's not true. i have more money than my friend. i invite him to dinner. then when the bill comes, it's clear to both of us that i will pay. but we have this good manners that the other guy should insist for a minute or more let us split or let and then we play this game but we both know that my friend made an offer to be rejected now you can already guess with my primordial balkan evil what i like to do i say as a rule okay if you want you pay and then this is a catastrophe of course you know because the guy says oh my god i forgot my credit card we have to go through all this stuff now you will say this is an extreme case. it's not. is this not, it's not even totalitarian. the basic form of, let's call it ideological identification. to accept an that something that you are obliged to do. at the same time, you are. i put it like this, sorry, i try not to get lost. the pure formula is you are given a free choice on condition that you make the right choice. so i will not get lost into it. i will just say that we in the last 100 years, maybe less in the west. and i don't mean it in an ironic way. listen, to annoy many of my leftist friends, i say that... till now, european union was a kind of a miracle. i will tell you something very pathetic. yeah, there was still colonialism, up and down racism, but... i don't think there was an epoch in the entire history of humanity where such a large number of population lived in such a relative welfare, freedom, safety than in western europe, basically social democratic welfare state. and here i will again quote slijk, a conservative who introduced a wonderful distinction between objective and subjective social democracy. the guy in whose house we are sitting now, she was, although this wasn't called like that, she was in some sense an... let's cut the long story short. he was the closest the united states came to some kind of social democracy. but what we got in europe, but now it's being gradually dismantled, also in the united states, it's what slterijk calls objective social democracy, which means the basic social democratic values, the idea that society state had to provide for free education, healthcare and so on, which is simply part part of the basic social pact. even it gains an independence towards with regard to elections. like i remember, this was beautiful. in sweden, there was in the 60s, before the golden age of social democracy. then, i don't know where, late 60s, early 70s, palmer party, ol of palmer's social democracy lost. and some liberal, moderately conservative their opponents, other side, gained power. we were all afraid. oh my god, will they dismantle? no, they went in nationalization even further. you see, this is the true triumph, that ultimately it's not even important who wins, because elections because basic social democratic values are already part of the basic social pact. this is being... put under threat today. how? in his interpretation of the fall of east european communism, jürgen habermas. proved to be, i think, the ultimate left fukuyama is. fukuyama is referring to, you know, fukuyama at the end of his story and so on and so on. habermas silently accepts that the existing liberal democratic order is the best one possible and that while we should strive to make it more just, we should not challenge its basic premises. this is shai. he welcomed. when communism fell apart in late 80s, early 90s, habermas welcomed precisely what many leftists saw as the big deficiency of the anti-communist protests in eastern europe. the fact that these protests were not motivated by any new vision of a post-communist future these protests... kind of pseudo-revolutions where they were just... habermas calls them like this, rectifying or catch-up revolutions. in german, nachhollende. their aim was just to enable those societies to gain what the western europeans already bcht. and... the ongoing wave of protest. in western europe itself. tend to question this very basic liberal democratic frame. you remember the yellow vests in france. podemos, other protests in spain and so on. they are definitely not just catch-up movements. they embody the weird reversal that characterizes today's global situation. the old antagonism between ordinary people and financial capitalist elites is back with a vengeance, with ordinary people erupting in protest against the elites. however, what is new is that. the populist right. has proved to be much more adept in channeling this rage. in the direction in its own direction much more. adapt than the left al but you. was justified to say apropos the french protests, it's a nice french phrase, tout ce qui bouge n'est pas rouge. all that moves makes unrest is not red. there can be also movement coming from the other side. so uh... uh what i remember my first perception of this. i remember, i think it was in 2005, maybe i'm wrong, sorry, the last elections won by... tonny blair. lour party in england i remember i was by chance giving some classes in london and i saw quite by chance i almost don't watch tv some kind of a popular show. where. people were electing the most unpopular person in england. tony blair won. by the most hated person. what is so sad? two weeks after, in elections, tony blair won. so obviously this gap is very dangerous. we have some level of basic popular discontent. and it is impossible to translate it transpose it into the existing. party political, however you call it, frame. it was the same. i'm not here lost in details. this is, i think, a very dangerous phenomenon. it was the same, i don't really remember when this happened, some three years ago, gilet the yellow vest in france. tremendous movement and so on. then macron did something that an honest liberal. should do he invited them to negotiations and so on and it was very tragic to listen to it they simply couldn't find. points of agreement like they didn't speak the same language. but i don't put, now the thing to avoid here is the populist solution, claiming, yes, macron stood for the alienated state machinery. he didn't wasn't able to really listen to the people. but it's much more complex. because if you look at what the protesters demanded, it was a strange, inconsistent mixture of very pragmatic popular demands. like lower the price of gasoline and so on, all that stuff and up to racist demand less immigrants they many working people in france experience immigrants as unfair competition. and there is some truth in it, which is why, remember, this is crucial, that when bush the younger, i think, was president, it was he, not a democratic president, who gave, i think, citizenship to two million of illegal mexican, latin americanans, and so on and so on, for obvious reasons. the idea is... in this way, there will be the working class will have less influence, more competition and so on and so on. so i think that this is the gap we are all experiencing today. and our societies here with you, but also in europe, are dangerously approaching a kind of a, let's call it, new civil war. for the time being, it's not yet. armed conflict, but it's getting close to that. for example, look at what is happening at your place. democracy the way we know it. is characterized by two things. not only. the voice of the majority, blah blah, but also... and i like this aspect is crucial for. functioning democracy unconditional proceduralism you know you can say the elections were manipulated blah blah but once the numbers are here all sides accept them. like you remember al gore versus it was bush i think no you remember how it was probably manipulated all those what was it 400 votes in florida. but nonetheless, when the final verdict did came, all sides accepted it. this game is over. do you know that i think some 60, 70 percent of your republican party members think that biden is not a legal president? and so on. this is extremely dangerous, this idea. and this is typically how. without being directly revolutionary, conservative revolutionary, you manipulate mechanisms. like, you know, you have this minor proposal which was never used. subdivision of a law, how do you call it, that here in the states, if the situation of elections in a state is not clear blah blah, then in an extreme case the congress of a state, one of the state can directly nominate electoral blah blah blah. but now the plan of republicans is to to widen the scope of this so that that's why republicans now don't want so much the majority, i think, direct in congress or senate, but to gain as many states as possible. and then in two years next election, to simply play this game. democrats won, some republicans will say it was a mess, it's not clear and they're congress, state congress will do what it do. my problem here is that i don't buy the simple populist solution, which is get this. we need to abolish alienated politics and introduce some more authentic democracy and so on and so on. it's not, i think, the gap is the gap is irreducible. so again, how did we come to this? now i come to the central, very problematic, i hope for some of you, part. there is a general narrative gradually emerging, a narrative on what is going on in the last decades. in western countries. to cut a long story short, it is the return of what was repressed in the age of modernity and enlightenment. uh it it's not just. it's not just the other side of enlightenment, but also the antagonism which runs through enlightenment is becoming more and more visible. what do i mean by this? the dissatisfaction with the hegemonic ideological coordinates our spontaneous liberal democratic ideology, let's call it the fukuyama ideal. and i don't make too much more than it's necessary fan of fukuyama because you know, i met him once. he's quite an honest guy. he no longer is a fukuyamaist. he no longer believes in the end of history. last i i learned from him is that he supports bernie sanders. he was honest here. so again, uh we... what we are getting is... this fukuyamaist vision of liberal, almost social democratic welfare state is more and more accompanied by its dark fed. the obscenity of the populist discourse. permitted by racist and sexist. enjoyment. we are learning the hard way that the attempt of modernity to dispense with traditional forms of domination, father of the family, master and so on, and install secular democracy failed. the dimension of the master is returning with a vengeance in all its forms, patriarchal values, political authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism. and and so on and so on. it was clear already to freud that the decline of the paternal authority this is a thing not popular to say today, is an ambiguous process. father as a figure of moral authority, nonetheless enables the child to adopt a stance of moral autonomy, resisting the pressure of his its peers and the pressure of the corrupted social environment. following freud in his study, back in 1930s, in his study on authority and family, max horkheimer, the founder of the frankfurt school, made the same point. while, in the same spirit, adorno pointed out that one has to repeat this endlessly. that neither hitler nor stalin are in any sense paternal figures. they're a new form of obscene master if you already want. translation, but they are not quite adequate. in freudian terms, it is more something like urvater, you know, this freudian myth of the primordial father who is brutal master exploiting all directly possessing all women and so on and so on. it is translated into english. this was one of the big books which influenced me when i was young. alexander mzerlich, frankfurt school orient and psychoanalyst published in 1966. very important book auf dem weg zur vaterlosen gesellschaft on the way to society without fathers, where he analyzes in detail the process of the loss disintegration of paternal authority and how it gives birth to new forms of domination. now, the obvious answer to this crisis is but we don't need authorities. people themselves should reign. but here... oui. encounter a problem. in today's populism, the dark, obscene side of the reference to the people made itself palpable. the people to which populism refers doesn't exist. populism is by definition a mask of power. it is a fantasized entity evoked by new masters to justify their role as the servants of the people. enabling them to dismiss their opponents as the enemies of the people. the first step towards populism was made centuries ago. when. to counter the loss of traditional authority work. the leader king refers to go church tradition, the leader proclaimed himself a servant. for example, in germany. friedrich der grosse, frederick the great, defined himself as the first servant of state and his people. and this is how, from the early enlightenment onwards, a master justifies his rule. he is in reality the greatest servant, the servant of all his subjects servants. there are, of course, different modalities of this position of serving the servants. from techn, technocratic experts to religious fundamentalism to obscene clowns, master clown like donald trump. the obscene master is not a direct reaction to the failure of the traditional master. this figure is a reaction to the fact that the expert knowledge cannot properly function at the place of the agent of a social link, it has to be supplemented by a new obscene figure. now, the reaction to this predicament is double. we can reluctantly accept. the need to return to some form of social authority, since if the symbolic law, name of the father, loses its authority, desire itself van. that's unfortunately even a very popular position among some, i hate them, pseudo, i claim, lachenians. they claim, let's face it. the decline of paternal authority doesn't mean, oh, no father to limit us, we get full enjoyment. it means since our enjoyment is, so they claim, following st. paul, by definition transgressive. there is no enjoyment without violating prohibitions. if you lose the authority, prohibitive authority, you lose enjoyment itself. you enter depression, apathy and so on. and they usually quote the fact, which is an important fact, that in today's society with all the permissiveness what we get is... a much tighter. control, regulation in different forms, either right-wing or left-wing politically correct. categorization. so again, the idea is that when paternal authority disintegrates, what we get is so-called pathological narcissism. so that father is no longer an external authority, but simply your competitor. we get this obscene social situation. so the solution is we should go back, restore some kind of paternal authority or symbolic law as the agent of... prohibition. i. of course i reject. this. but then... uh. in his last years, and i disagree with lacon here, he was playing with another idea, unfortunately taken over by his, i'm always lost, what is your daughter's husband to you? son-in-law, his son-in-law, sorry? yes, milner brought this to the end. this idea which can be grounded in some laccon. fort formulations, but i don't think this is true laccon's position. miller calls for cynical stance. he says that since we cannot return to the authority of the law. what we can do is as if we sustain the law. like we know it doesn't work, but at the same time, the law, the authority, but at the same time, we know that without the law, there is chaos, social disintegration. so let's proceed in a cynical way. i don't believe in any foundation of the law, not even in democratic foundation, but let's act as if. the law works. here are two very sad quotes from miller. a psychoanalyst acts so that semblances the fake semblance of authority semblances remain at their places while making sure that the subjects under uh. peace. psychoanalysts care, do not take them as real. one should somehow bring oneself to remain taken in by them, fooled by them. so the axiom of cynical wisdom is that, again quote from miller, one should protect the semblances of power for the good reason that one should be able to continue to enjoy. the point is not to attach oneself to the semblances of the existing power, but to consider them necessary. so, the law. we should be aware that it's not true, it's a fake, but it's a necessary fake. now, you know kafka. i think you remember towards the end of the trial, this is what. the priest tells to joseph k, when joseph k explodes, but what you are telling is that god, the law is not true and that whatever the priest says, yes, it's not true, but it's necessary. so... i, of course. reject this way if for no other reason that i think it's that cynical distance. doesn't work in the sense that even if you subjectively think that you gained distance towards the law, there is more truth in how you act. pretending to believe in the law then. in your inner distance from it. and i have my own political experience here. you know who, i'm sorry, i will now do something horrible. don't be afraid, although, you know, i will say something just to annoy you. you know what he told me, my good friend before? he said, say whatever you want, just don't make fun of jews and not gay people. okay. i will follow that. i will follow that. although my god, my god you know, if you are not my friend, you know. okay, no, no, i will not. i respect it. but what i... uh. what i want to say is that. i, i will take my own example. yugoslavia. it was a perfect socialist country. i've written about it. maybe you know it, where somewhere from, i would say, 60s, 1960s onwards. it wasn't only that. even the bureaucracy, ruling class, communist bureaucracy, didn't believe in their own... ideology we went a step further. to make a career. in the central committee and so on, it was necessary not to take. the official ideology seriously. and i had a personal experience, not me, myself. i got two friends who were what one cannot but describe honest communists. they took all the yugoslav ideology, you know, against soviet bureaucratic socialism, we have self-management, democratic socialism, blah, blah. they took it seriously. they lost their post. because the ruling bureaucracy knew well that if you take the official ideology, seriously, is one step from dissidence. because then you will discover, my god, things are not really like that and so on. so, isn't this wonderful? again, be careful what i say. i'm not saying, just there is brutal power. it doesn't matter if you take it seriously or not. no, you have to have a cynical distance towards it for the power to function properly. so i don't believe that cyn works. can i repeat? an an old joke, very modest, don't give me yours. i repeat that i'm afraid you all know it. i used it for some time in all my lectures, but it fits perfectly here. nils b, my favorite, you know that eternal story that i repeat, he had a wooden hut somewhere in a forest close to copenhagen, and he had above the entrance a horseshoe. which is a superstitious item allegedly preventing evil spirits to enter the house. so a french scientist visits him and asked him, bor, why do you have this there? aren't you a scientist? i hope you don't believe in it. and bor gave a perfect marxist critico-ideological answer. he said, i'm not an idiot. i don't believe it. but i have it there because i was told that it works even if you don't believe in it. that's ideology today. that's the proper cynical approach. we don't believe in law order, justice and so on, but we enact it. now, the next... solution formula. why why? okay, i will nonetheless, i hope i cannot go. say something very positive about... the i hope no no no no no it will be very correct. you know what worries me most and you should agree with me here. the tendency that we see now which i cannot name but... zionist anti-seemitism by this i mean the following did you notice how wächter... right wingers. who are this extreme populists, are here in the states, in western europe, anti-semitic. but they support israel there. this is a very dangerous game and i seriously worry when the israeli government often accepts this game. and i know this from, you know who was the primordial father of all this? it's a horrible name. rit him. horrible name. you know, the holocaust. vater reinhard heidrich. he wrote in 37 a wonderful, wonderful with me means horrifying, text where he says, jews are incredibly creative people. but it's too much for us here in germany. if jews go to palestine, we will support him. they're great people. we will trade with them, just not here. the next guy did the same. do you remember some, now it's already over 10 years ago, braving that crazy norwegian who shot a norwegian friend sent me the translation of some of his texts where this guy said js are dangerous in the west. we should limit their influence. but there in palestine, we should fully support them because they are the last bastion of western civilization and so on and so on. all i'm saying, i hope we all agree, is that this is a very dangerous game. and it's incredible how some of the american religious fundamentalists support israel. but when you read their reasons, they are horrible. the main reason is that it says in some city stuff like that. what comes up here?
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
the rapture.
the rapture.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah, yeah, which i think it's the beginning of anti-semitism, the beginning of the john, how do you call it,
yeah, yeah, which i think it's the beginning of anti-semitism, the beginning of the john, how do you call it,
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
there's at least a website. i don't know if it's,'s probably not real.
there's at least a website. i don't know if it's,'s probably not real.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
there's a rapture pet care is offered in the united kingdom. so for people who are not of the christian faith, they can pair their pets.
there's a rapture pet care is offered in the united kingdom. so for people who are not of the christian faith, they can pair their pets.
Slavoj Žižek
are really oh my god, there are so many interesting things.
are really oh my god, there are so many interesting things.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
i.
i.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah, yeah. no, what i want to say is that their usual explanation is it says somewhere there that before armageddon, jews will take over the holy land. well, then with armageddon they will be burned also if they don't turn christians. but with this very strange justification, they support israel. like, yeah, yeah, be there as a guarantee that you will be burned. you know. you know what is for me, allow me another improvisation, we are out of dangerous waters. did you see rapture, not rapture u, but rapture r-a, no? rapture like did you see a wonderful movie with mimi rogers? please download it. you get it for rapture. it's, i think... it's an example of what i call christian atheism. the most radical critique of christianity, but taking it seriously from inside. download it, you will be shocked. the first three quarters of the movie is the usual drama and so on. mimi rogers plays a promiscuous young woman who goes into... that's swinging and so on. then she falls in love with a guy, they marry, they have a daughter or son. but the guy, her husband, is killed in an accidental way by a burglar and this breaks her down, so she has this idea how to rejoin her husband and she thinks that if she moves with her child into a desert sorry that she will be rapture taken into heaven and she spend there a year or two, nothing happens, blah blah. then she has the idea her daughter, i think it's daughter, tells her, mommy, but why don't you simply kill me and then yourself and... it will happen immediately. she kills her daughter, but somehow it happens, cannot kill herself. then she is arrested for this. i simplify the story. then she is in prison. now if at that point the movie were to end, it would have been a, kind of a standard psychological drama, the delusion, despair of blah blah, but then something incredible happens. while she's in prison, the apocalypse rapture happens. it takes. all of a sudden, the walls of the prison disintegrate. she goes out. you see four riders of the apocalypse there riding. and she goes to a car, a policeman who supports her with her. and they just drive, drive, and come to the edge of our world. uh where you see it's of course, mythic where you see a beautiful mountain paradise. and there. her dead husband and daughter come to the edge to them and say, so glad, just say, i love jesus, and i you will enter. and mimi rogers said, no, i cannot. do it. they ask her why? he says, god did so many horrible things to me, i cannot say that sincerely. i don't want to serve god in any way, not even rhetorically. then they said, but you know what this means, her dead husband it means... how long will you stay there like that? and that's the last sense she said, i know, forever. this is for me a true and deeply christian undermining of religion, which is internal to religion. any idiot can say there is no god and so on, but as jacques lacombe put it, in his wonderful reading of pascalan bless pascal weigler. the true thing is not i act as if there is no god. it is to say, even if god exists, i will act as if god doesn't exist. and in a wonderful reading, lacombe proves that this is the imminent truth of pchalian v, that this is the true we. as lacombe put it literally, true atheism is not there is no god. true atheism is, even if there is god, i will not serve. him okay, we don't have time to go further in this direction, so let's go into the opposite way to cynicism. why a master et all? because the other way to deal with the decline of traditional authority is the anarchist way. and anarchism, as you all know, is enjoying a revival today, from noam chomsky to david greber. anarchism is not against public power. catherine malabou, whom i appreciate very much, i mean, she's one of the women who wrote the best, one of the best books on hegel in last decades. and what finally overturned me to feminism, is not this bullshit, you know, women's rights, blah, blah, blah. it's that how could i not be a feminist when i am compelled to admit that? all the really great texts on hegel in the last 20 years are written by women. rebecca comi, catherine malabou and so on.
yeah, yeah. no, what i want to say is that their usual explanation is it says somewhere there that before armageddon, jews will take over the holy land. well, then with armageddon they will be burned also if they don't turn christians. but with this very strange justification, they support israel. like, yeah, yeah, be there as a guarantee that you will be burned. you know. you know what is for me, allow me another improvisation, we are out of dangerous waters. did you see rapture, not rapture u, but rapture r-a, no? rapture like did you see a wonderful movie with mimi rogers? please download it. you get it for rapture. it's, i think... it's an example of what i call christian atheism. the most radical critique of christianity, but taking it seriously from inside. download it, you will be shocked. the first three quarters of the movie is the usual drama and so on. mimi rogers plays a promiscuous young woman who goes into... that's swinging and so on. then she falls in love with a guy, they marry, they have a daughter or son. but the guy, her husband, is killed in an accidental way by a burglar and this breaks her down, so she has this idea how to rejoin her husband and she thinks that if she moves with her child into a desert sorry that she will be rapture taken into heaven and she spend there a year or two, nothing happens, blah blah. then she has the idea her daughter, i think it's daughter, tells her, mommy, but why don't you simply kill me and then yourself and... it will happen immediately. she kills her daughter, but somehow it happens, cannot kill herself. then she is arrested for this. i simplify the story. then she is in prison. now if at that point the movie were to end, it would have been a, kind of a standard psychological drama, the delusion, despair of blah blah, but then something incredible happens. while she's in prison, the apocalypse rapture happens. it takes. all of a sudden, the walls of the prison disintegrate. she goes out. you see four riders of the apocalypse there riding. and she goes to a car, a policeman who supports her with her. and they just drive, drive, and come to the edge of our world. uh where you see it's of course, mythic where you see a beautiful mountain paradise. and there. her dead husband and daughter come to the edge to them and say, so glad, just say, i love jesus, and i you will enter. and mimi rogers said, no, i cannot. do it. they ask her why? he says, god did so many horrible things to me, i cannot say that sincerely. i don't want to serve god in any way, not even rhetorically. then they said, but you know what this means, her dead husband it means... how long will you stay there like that? and that's the last sense she said, i know, forever. this is for me a true and deeply christian undermining of religion, which is internal to religion. any idiot can say there is no god and so on, but as jacques lacombe put it, in his wonderful reading of pascalan bless pascal weigler. the true thing is not i act as if there is no god. it is to say, even if god exists, i will act as if god doesn't exist. and in a wonderful reading, lacombe proves that this is the imminent truth of pchalian v, that this is the true we. as lacombe put it literally, true atheism is not there is no god. true atheism is, even if there is god, i will not serve. him okay, we don't have time to go further in this direction, so let's go into the opposite way to cynicism. why a master et all? because the other way to deal with the decline of traditional authority is the anarchist way. and anarchism, as you all know, is enjoying a revival today, from noam chomsky to david greber. anarchism is not against public power. catherine malabou, whom i appreciate very much, i mean, she's one of the women who wrote the best, one of the best books on hegel in last decades. and what finally overturned me to feminism, is not this bullshit, you know, women's rights, blah, blah, blah. it's that how could i not be a feminist when i am compelled to admit that? all the really great texts on hegel in the last 20 years are written by women. rebecca comi, catherine malabou and so on.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
go
go
Slavoj Žižek
sorry?
sorry?
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
ro morasco at hunter college, our colleague, also has a.
ro morasco at hunter college, our colleague, also has a.
Slavoj Žižek
but...
but...
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
colleague robin morosasco
colleague robin morosasco
Slavoj Žižek
he here, man.
he here, man.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
robin.
robin.
Slavoj Žižek
are you robin like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. no, really, that's wonderful because there are others, you have that, sorry for the sexist undertone, roio zambrana or who? the puerto rican hegelian who also wrote a wonderful book on hegel in a beautiful way, she's a radical left, criticizing this, how should i call it, liberal hegelianism, which focuses on mutual recognition and so on and. and so on. let me go on. catherine malabou. refers to jacques rancier, who asserts radical equality between citizens who are considered to be able to both command and obey. so... in for anarchists there is public power but through democracy would rely on the contingency of who governs and who is governed because governing does not require any particular skill. and i think you don't have to be anarchist to... accept this. look, that's what's so great in our legal system even. hegel knew this when he wrote that how do you call the idiots were selected by the jury or how
are you robin like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. no, really, that's wonderful because there are others, you have that, sorry for the sexist undertone, roio zambrana or who? the puerto rican hegelian who also wrote a wonderful book on hegel in a beautiful way, she's a radical left, criticizing this, how should i call it, liberal hegelianism, which focuses on mutual recognition and so on and. and so on. let me go on. catherine malabou. refers to jacques rancier, who asserts radical equality between citizens who are considered to be able to both command and obey. so... in for anarchists there is public power but through democracy would rely on the contingency of who governs and who is governed because governing does not require any particular skill. and i think you don't have to be anarchist to... accept this. look, that's what's so great in our legal system even. hegel knew this when he wrote that how do you call the idiots were selected by the jury or how
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
jurors
jurors
Slavoj Žižek
they, yeah, they are selected more or less, okay, if you are not a complete idiot or whatever, but by lot, no? and hegel says this is crucial. yes, you have the expert judge, blah, blah, but the decision must be made by a group of people who are in principle equal to you. like the gr, if you don't do this, you are in the... authoritarian system of experts and so on and so on. but then... there is a problem with this stance. etienne balibar goes to the crux of the problem. in a big book, i think you also get it on whatever, you can download it on youtube even, i don't know where. here is a quote from balibar. the anarchists will say that we are able to imagine and realize in practice an alternative social fabric because the whole society could one way or another, em emerge from forms of self-government and self-organization that can be experienced and experimented with at the level of cooperatives, towns and so on. today, this idea is becoming increasingly influential and people give us examples of what the kurdish fighters strive in. ro java. and incidentally... rojava, you know, the north of syria. was one of the few places and here i agree even with chomsky, you remember when under trump trump decided to withdraw american army from keeping the kurds there. and even chomsky said this one case, it was not good for americans to leave because the poor kurds there were basically left to erdogan or. syrians dominated by russians in the south and it's incredible. rajjava is basically a small, sorry, i mean it respectively city town but they have an incredibly lively university. i was invited there. i gave zoom talks. it's an incredible, you know, it was another place where this happens. that's why i also think united states were wrong to such a stupid way to withdraw from afghanistan. it wasn't just american occupation. under american occupation, there were new forms of feminism, civil life. do you know that in afghanistan? till taliban took over, there were groups of marxists and so on. they wanted to invite me. there was a group, some kind of, i don't know what kind of, they call themselves theater, where i spoke with the guy, it's a german scandinavian guy, he organized it. they asked... goran gn terborn, well-known swedish marxist, they thought, okay, 2030 idiots will come 400. young afghan escape. don't underestimate precisely because the situation was. desperate, they only had art and
they, yeah, they are selected more or less, okay, if you are not a complete idiot or whatever, but by lot, no? and hegel says this is crucial. yes, you have the expert judge, blah, blah, but the decision must be made by a group of people who are in principle equal to you. like the gr, if you don't do this, you are in the... authoritarian system of experts and so on and so on. but then... there is a problem with this stance. etienne balibar goes to the crux of the problem. in a big book, i think you also get it on whatever, you can download it on youtube even, i don't know where. here is a quote from balibar. the anarchists will say that we are able to imagine and realize in practice an alternative social fabric because the whole society could one way or another, em emerge from forms of self-government and self-organization that can be experienced and experimented with at the level of cooperatives, towns and so on. today, this idea is becoming increasingly influential and people give us examples of what the kurdish fighters strive in. ro java. and incidentally... rojava, you know, the north of syria. was one of the few places and here i agree even with chomsky, you remember when under trump trump decided to withdraw american army from keeping the kurds there. and even chomsky said this one case, it was not good for americans to leave because the poor kurds there were basically left to erdogan or. syrians dominated by russians in the south and it's incredible. rajjava is basically a small, sorry, i mean it respectively city town but they have an incredibly lively university. i was invited there. i gave zoom talks. it's an incredible, you know, it was another place where this happens. that's why i also think united states were wrong to such a stupid way to withdraw from afghanistan. it wasn't just american occupation. under american occupation, there were new forms of feminism, civil life. do you know that in afghanistan? till taliban took over, there were groups of marxists and so on. they wanted to invite me. there was a group, some kind of, i don't know what kind of, they call themselves theater, where i spoke with the guy, it's a german scandinavian guy, he organized it. they asked... goran gn terborn, well-known swedish marxist, they thought, okay, 2030 idiots will come 400. young afghan escape. don't underestimate precisely because the situation was. desperate, they only had art and
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
theory. but
theory. but
Slavoj Žižek
uh let's go. on uh uh. can this work? malu herself points to problems with this. first, it's a very intelligent argument, a hegelian. you should be a hegelian to made it. anarchism is becoming today a key feature of global capitalism itself. quote from malou, our current epoch is characterized by a coexistence between a de facto anarchism and a dawning or awakening anarchism. de facto anarchism is the reign of anarcho-capitalism, which is contemporaneous with the end of the welfare state, creating in citizens a feeling of abandonment. just think of the state of hospitals and healthcare today. my contention is that current capitalism is undertaking its anarchist or libertarian turn. a general uberization like uber, the taxes and so on of life. second, even more intelligent point by malu, this anarcho-capitalism is the other side of new authoritarianism. quote, authoritarianism does not contradict the disappearance of the state. it is its messenger, the mask of this so-called collaborative economy which by bringing professionals and users into direct contact through technological platforms pulverizes or all. fix. i don't want to lose time here. if you want an example, just think about elon musk. this obscenity of neo-feudalism, in what sense? i don't like this metaphor. we are approaching a feudal neo-feudal society, but here it has some weight. look, what musk did with his, now, what did he buy twitter? no? it's a new form of what marx called privatization of the commons. it's not the old form where you have commons, common property, and then one capitalist grabs this part. no, commons remain commons, but they are owned by a private person. and that's the paradox of what musk is doing. like, isn't it madness that one guy but as his private property, one of the key mediums of our commons, we communicate in it and treats it as his property, isn't this obscene that a guy says if i buy google, i will decide, sorry, twitter, i will decide the fate of our democracy and all that crap. which is why, don't minister understand me. now i will really say, but something obscene. when people ask me, are you for death penalty? penalty. i say in principle, yes, but after we kill some people, and mask is among them, okay.. what this means is that the authoritarianism is the other side of the disappearance of the state. more precisely the disappearance of the most precious function of the state, that of providing public services. we thereby touch the vast domain of public services, healthcare, education, which cannot be provided, i think, through expanding cooperatives and other forms of local self-organization. balibar makes this point clear. another quote from balibar. if you look at the poor in american suburbs. mainly african americans and other migrant groups, what they suffer from is the fact that america never really had a welfare state. in the british, french or german sense. the catastrophe for them is not that there is too much state, it is that there is not enough. of the state. and i think we should shamelessly proceed in this direction. it's a choice. i cannot argue for it today, but i want to say that... you know, it's easy to say, authentic, we need broader authority, but it should grow organically from local communities and so on. it's too late for that. the example that i repeat all the time in the last days, think about the terrible heat dome, you remember, a year and a half ago, the previous summer, northwest united states, southwest canada, where temperatures were, i don't know, you're crazy. they were almost middle east, not almost. at some point vancouver and seattle were warmer than the middle east. now... what the fuck will you say there with local approach? no, because they are even not so bad in their ecological activity there. it has almost nothing to do with what they are doing there. means that a global disturbance of how air circulates. in the north of our hemisphere beneath arctic, something is perturbed there. we need in this sense more... more globalization. and now i don't want really, just if you allow me to finish. you said a little bit too eagerly. i expected you, no, this was what i meant before, an offer to be refused. i expected you, no, slave, be love, you just go on. but you notice how immediately you jump to it.
uh let's go. on uh uh. can this work? malu herself points to problems with this. first, it's a very intelligent argument, a hegelian. you should be a hegelian to made it. anarchism is becoming today a key feature of global capitalism itself. quote from malou, our current epoch is characterized by a coexistence between a de facto anarchism and a dawning or awakening anarchism. de facto anarchism is the reign of anarcho-capitalism, which is contemporaneous with the end of the welfare state, creating in citizens a feeling of abandonment. just think of the state of hospitals and healthcare today. my contention is that current capitalism is undertaking its anarchist or libertarian turn. a general uberization like uber, the taxes and so on of life. second, even more intelligent point by malu, this anarcho-capitalism is the other side of new authoritarianism. quote, authoritarianism does not contradict the disappearance of the state. it is its messenger, the mask of this so-called collaborative economy which by bringing professionals and users into direct contact through technological platforms pulverizes or all. fix. i don't want to lose time here. if you want an example, just think about elon musk. this obscenity of neo-feudalism, in what sense? i don't like this metaphor. we are approaching a feudal neo-feudal society, but here it has some weight. look, what musk did with his, now, what did he buy twitter? no? it's a new form of what marx called privatization of the commons. it's not the old form where you have commons, common property, and then one capitalist grabs this part. no, commons remain commons, but they are owned by a private person. and that's the paradox of what musk is doing. like, isn't it madness that one guy but as his private property, one of the key mediums of our commons, we communicate in it and treats it as his property, isn't this obscene that a guy says if i buy google, i will decide, sorry, twitter, i will decide the fate of our democracy and all that crap. which is why, don't minister understand me. now i will really say, but something obscene. when people ask me, are you for death penalty? penalty. i say in principle, yes, but after we kill some people, and mask is among them, okay.. what this means is that the authoritarianism is the other side of the disappearance of the state. more precisely the disappearance of the most precious function of the state, that of providing public services. we thereby touch the vast domain of public services, healthcare, education, which cannot be provided, i think, through expanding cooperatives and other forms of local self-organization. balibar makes this point clear. another quote from balibar. if you look at the poor in american suburbs. mainly african americans and other migrant groups, what they suffer from is the fact that america never really had a welfare state. in the british, french or german sense. the catastrophe for them is not that there is too much state, it is that there is not enough. of the state. and i think we should shamelessly proceed in this direction. it's a choice. i cannot argue for it today, but i want to say that... you know, it's easy to say, authentic, we need broader authority, but it should grow organically from local communities and so on. it's too late for that. the example that i repeat all the time in the last days, think about the terrible heat dome, you remember, a year and a half ago, the previous summer, northwest united states, southwest canada, where temperatures were, i don't know, you're crazy. they were almost middle east, not almost. at some point vancouver and seattle were warmer than the middle east. now... what the fuck will you say there with local approach? no, because they are even not so bad in their ecological activity there. it has almost nothing to do with what they are doing there. means that a global disturbance of how air circulates. in the north of our hemisphere beneath arctic, something is perturbed there. we need in this sense more... more globalization. and now i don't want really, just if you allow me to finish. you said a little bit too eagerly. i expected you, no, this was what i meant before, an offer to be refused. i expected you, no, slave, be love, you just go on. but you notice how immediately you jump to it.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
it's like when a waiter asks you how are you and you answer.
it's like when a waiter asks you how are you and you answer.
Slavoj Žižek
i did once, my god, this is a wonderful way how i misunderstood these unwritten rules. the first time in mid-1980s that i came to the united states, i didn't know your local aboriginal manners. so the waiter asked me, how are you? and i was such an idiot. i'm answering sorry, i just flew from europe, i'm still jet lagged and so on. the waiter, look at me, don't you get it? are you stupid or what? you know. okay. uh. you know what the big problem today? let me just, this is part of a longer text, conclude with the function of authority today. i think it's way too simple. to just say we need to abolish authority. i will read you a quote. i mentioned this, but i didn't quote exactly from i have big problems with hannah arendt, but he wrote a short text a short text on education where he makes a wonderful remark on parental authority, a quote. modern man could find no clearer expression for his dissatisfaction with the world, for his disgust with things as they are, than by his refusal to assume in respect to his children responsibility for all. dich. it is as though parents daily say, in this world even we are not very securely at home. how to move about in it, what to know, what skills to master, are mysteries to us also. you must try to make out as best as you can. in any case, you are not entitled to call us to account. we are innocent. we wash our hands. of you. so you know what's the idea? like your son asks you, my god, it's a sheet, please give me some security. and the most comfortable thing, although it's true, that's the point, it's to say, sorry, we live in a messy world. i'm also at a loss. i cannot be your authority so again it's factual true but it is nonetheless existentially. fault. apparent. should not wash his hands. in this way. incidentally, i'm so sad here we approach some kind of a theory that i don't have time to go into this. it's the same with uh. predeterminism, either the old religious one or this scientific idea that all our acts are, it's not religious predestination, but determined, you know, the formula is freedom is user's illusion. and i don't have time to go in this wonderful debate like what happens with us if i can scientifically prove that my acts are... already neuronally whatever or socially also to a point predetermined. you know whom you should read. he's a genius and i will tell you why. benjamin libet, a guy i think somewhere there in at berkeley, already 30 years ago, even more, i think 40, he made his famous experiment and some idiots took it as a proof that there is no free will. he asked he wired you that he asked you just to do something like whenever you want, you pick up, let's say, these glasses. and he proved that before you make the decision. the... command in york. nererves to your hand to move are already on the way. in other words, when you make even a contingent free decision, you just... . become aware in your mind of something which is already going on in your. but he's a good jewish hegian and add something wonderful. he says wonderful idea. this doesn't prove that there is no free will. his point is that the mistake here is to focus on positive decisions. he said the space of free will is dead. even when you decide to do something, you block it, sabotage it in the middle. that's the zero level of freedom and there are wonderful debates on it, but... what i'm trying to tell you is this. let's say you are convinced that you don't have free will. it's just your illusion. so what can you... do when, i'm sorry for this pathetic example. you go here across the street to central park, don't you have some stupid lake there? you see a small boy or girl drowning there. well, if you really believe in... full... determination. you would say, fuck it, it's determined. why should i worry? it's already written what i will do. but isn't it that, and the whole logic of protestantism, which is why i agree with my friend fred jameson, who said that the most interesting theological notion for a marxist is predestination. the whole problem of protestantism, in other words, the paradox of protestantism, on the one hand, predestination. on the other hand, protestantism was originally at least the religion of capitalism, which is the most dynamic order. so the problem is this one. you are predestined, but you don't know. how you are predetermined. and i think the true freedom is not this vulgar idea of, you know, oh, i go to a pisserie, i'm free to choose cheesecake or strawberry cake or whatever. no, the true freedom is... i have to do something, i know it's predetermined and i'm terribly afraid that i will by chance miss what i'm determined to do. you know, this worry, it's predetermined, but my god, what if i miss it somehow? that full anxiety of that you experience. why? because uh because the uh because... you know, the problem is that freedom may be a user's illusion. but. yeah predetermination in the sense of i'm just a passive machine brains, environment is playing its games through me. i cannot subjectively assume it. the moment i consciously act like this, like i, my imagination is so evil, i said to the small girl, bye bye, drown happily, i'm predetermined sorry, not to help you. it's false. you have to act as if you are free even if you are predetermined. and isn't the same with back to hannah arendt's example with the unfortunate. even even if it's true that you are not master of the game. you are not allowed ethically to act like that. it's disgusting to say, sorry. i even if you know that your authority is a fake, you have to heroically assume it. and i don't have time to develop it now, but this is not. this is not a cynicism. you authentically assume it. so just to finish, you know what would be for me the basic figure of a new, not master but leader. now, i was very critical towards obama. but you remember at the beginning, he repeated this message, yes we can. yes, we can. this is, i think, the authentic leader. message. it's not i know this is the stalinist master who tells you i know better than you what is good for you. no no the authentic master's message is paradoxically i give to you your freedom. i open the space for you and there is a nice add the rh premise here. it's that what we in our societies experience as freedom, especially as freedom of choice, is really this consumerist freedom, cheesecake or strawberry cake in different forms, which is really a form of our slavery. you accept the choices offered to you by society and you play games within this sphere. the true act of freedom is to change under undermine the very scope, the whole field of options. and for this, you need a leader. not a leader who knows better than you, but you need, as it were, to be pushed from outside, to be told, yes, you can. i'm not saying that obama then did it, but all proper leaders, the one who also ultimately failed, it's very sad, but let's go to the highest, nelson mandela. his message was, yes we can. we can get rid of, we can break down apartheid and so on and so on. so that's, again, a different type of leader. it just kind of literally pushes you into freedom. maybe it's time to stop. i hope you will still talk with me, although i broke some of the rules.
i did once, my god, this is a wonderful way how i misunderstood these unwritten rules. the first time in mid-1980s that i came to the united states, i didn't know your local aboriginal manners. so the waiter asked me, how are you? and i was such an idiot. i'm answering sorry, i just flew from europe, i'm still jet lagged and so on. the waiter, look at me, don't you get it? are you stupid or what? you know. okay. uh. you know what the big problem today? let me just, this is part of a longer text, conclude with the function of authority today. i think it's way too simple. to just say we need to abolish authority. i will read you a quote. i mentioned this, but i didn't quote exactly from i have big problems with hannah arendt, but he wrote a short text a short text on education where he makes a wonderful remark on parental authority, a quote. modern man could find no clearer expression for his dissatisfaction with the world, for his disgust with things as they are, than by his refusal to assume in respect to his children responsibility for all. dich. it is as though parents daily say, in this world even we are not very securely at home. how to move about in it, what to know, what skills to master, are mysteries to us also. you must try to make out as best as you can. in any case, you are not entitled to call us to account. we are innocent. we wash our hands. of you. so you know what's the idea? like your son asks you, my god, it's a sheet, please give me some security. and the most comfortable thing, although it's true, that's the point, it's to say, sorry, we live in a messy world. i'm also at a loss. i cannot be your authority so again it's factual true but it is nonetheless existentially. fault. apparent. should not wash his hands. in this way. incidentally, i'm so sad here we approach some kind of a theory that i don't have time to go into this. it's the same with uh. predeterminism, either the old religious one or this scientific idea that all our acts are, it's not religious predestination, but determined, you know, the formula is freedom is user's illusion. and i don't have time to go in this wonderful debate like what happens with us if i can scientifically prove that my acts are... already neuronally whatever or socially also to a point predetermined. you know whom you should read. he's a genius and i will tell you why. benjamin libet, a guy i think somewhere there in at berkeley, already 30 years ago, even more, i think 40, he made his famous experiment and some idiots took it as a proof that there is no free will. he asked he wired you that he asked you just to do something like whenever you want, you pick up, let's say, these glasses. and he proved that before you make the decision. the... command in york. nererves to your hand to move are already on the way. in other words, when you make even a contingent free decision, you just... . become aware in your mind of something which is already going on in your. but he's a good jewish hegian and add something wonderful. he says wonderful idea. this doesn't prove that there is no free will. his point is that the mistake here is to focus on positive decisions. he said the space of free will is dead. even when you decide to do something, you block it, sabotage it in the middle. that's the zero level of freedom and there are wonderful debates on it, but... what i'm trying to tell you is this. let's say you are convinced that you don't have free will. it's just your illusion. so what can you... do when, i'm sorry for this pathetic example. you go here across the street to central park, don't you have some stupid lake there? you see a small boy or girl drowning there. well, if you really believe in... full... determination. you would say, fuck it, it's determined. why should i worry? it's already written what i will do. but isn't it that, and the whole logic of protestantism, which is why i agree with my friend fred jameson, who said that the most interesting theological notion for a marxist is predestination. the whole problem of protestantism, in other words, the paradox of protestantism, on the one hand, predestination. on the other hand, protestantism was originally at least the religion of capitalism, which is the most dynamic order. so the problem is this one. you are predestined, but you don't know. how you are predetermined. and i think the true freedom is not this vulgar idea of, you know, oh, i go to a pisserie, i'm free to choose cheesecake or strawberry cake or whatever. no, the true freedom is... i have to do something, i know it's predetermined and i'm terribly afraid that i will by chance miss what i'm determined to do. you know, this worry, it's predetermined, but my god, what if i miss it somehow? that full anxiety of that you experience. why? because uh because the uh because... you know, the problem is that freedom may be a user's illusion. but. yeah predetermination in the sense of i'm just a passive machine brains, environment is playing its games through me. i cannot subjectively assume it. the moment i consciously act like this, like i, my imagination is so evil, i said to the small girl, bye bye, drown happily, i'm predetermined sorry, not to help you. it's false. you have to act as if you are free even if you are predetermined. and isn't the same with back to hannah arendt's example with the unfortunate. even even if it's true that you are not master of the game. you are not allowed ethically to act like that. it's disgusting to say, sorry. i even if you know that your authority is a fake, you have to heroically assume it. and i don't have time to develop it now, but this is not. this is not a cynicism. you authentically assume it. so just to finish, you know what would be for me the basic figure of a new, not master but leader. now, i was very critical towards obama. but you remember at the beginning, he repeated this message, yes we can. yes, we can. this is, i think, the authentic leader. message. it's not i know this is the stalinist master who tells you i know better than you what is good for you. no no the authentic master's message is paradoxically i give to you your freedom. i open the space for you and there is a nice add the rh premise here. it's that what we in our societies experience as freedom, especially as freedom of choice, is really this consumerist freedom, cheesecake or strawberry cake in different forms, which is really a form of our slavery. you accept the choices offered to you by society and you play games within this sphere. the true act of freedom is to change under undermine the very scope, the whole field of options. and for this, you need a leader. not a leader who knows better than you, but you need, as it were, to be pushed from outside, to be told, yes, you can. i'm not saying that obama then did it, but all proper leaders, the one who also ultimately failed, it's very sad, but let's go to the highest, nelson mandela. his message was, yes we can. we can get rid of, we can break down apartheid and so on and so on. so that's, again, a different type of leader. it just kind of literally pushes you into freedom. maybe it's time to stop. i hope you will still talk with me, although i broke some of the rules.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
.
.
Slavoj Žižek
where are we now? what's the time? okay.
where are we now? what's the time? okay.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
so it's 7.25 and i was asked to just do a little response and then we could open it up, okay?
so it's 7.25 and i was asked to just do a little response and then we could open it up, okay?
Slavoj Žižek
now i like this totalitarian twist of you. i was asked by whom? by yourself, i think, you know. well i won't be is that that makes sense, right, peter? okay.
now i like this totalitarian twist of you. i was asked by whom? by yourself, i think, you know. well i won't be is that that makes sense, right, peter? okay.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
so i.
so i.
Slavoj Žižek
just wanted.
just wanted.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
thanks, fab again. for such a wonderful, we just give another round of applause for our guests.
thanks, fab again. for such a wonderful, we just give another round of applause for our guests.
Slavoj Žižek
.
.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
you know?
you know?
Slavoj Žižek
for me, you know my rhetorical trick, whenever you begin your remarks in this way, i already see your other hand sharpening the knife. i'm sharpening the knife.
for me, you know my rhetorical trick, whenever you begin your remarks in this way, i already see your other hand sharpening the knife. i'm sharpening the knife.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
i want to just quickly respond to a few things.
i want to just quickly respond to a few things.
Slavoj Žižek
okay, please.
okay, please.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
so i just, you know, this idea of the joke that he made about what we can't say, which was a joke, but i think...
so i just, you know, this idea of the joke that he made about what we can't say, which was a joke, but i think...
Slavoj Žižek
it's really interesting.
it's really interesting.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
of what we can't.
of what we can't.
Slavoj Žižek
about.
about.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
the joke that you made about anyway.
the joke that you made about anyway.
Slavoj Žižek
okay,. i just wanted to make this point and i think it's really.
okay,. i just wanted to make this point and i think it's really.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
i think it's really, really important. when you think about savoy's intellectual discourse, there is the joke aspect of it. there is the works that he prefers, which are the sort of long philosophical excurs, and it's the contemporary political interventions. and i've always thought that these were a choice. like you could have the jokester, you could have the contemporary political intervention, or you could have a long excurs. onus on shelling. and i realized that it's not a choice. they are all concurrent. and the reason why they're all concurrent is because, and we're lucky to see this now, there's this war on what hegel calls the ready-made. anytime you do a presentation, you have to understand the sort of ironies. you have to understand the idea that there's a war on like the kind of tendencies of bourgeois narrative and just the readyades of the thought toolbox. that we're working with, that the jokes, the serious slaughter tyke, the shelling, the a, and the discussions of what's going on now, all kind of are interdependent dialectically. so i just wanted to say that, and i wanted to just briefly just hit a couple of notes about the polish regimen in haiti and the constitution.
i think it's really, really important. when you think about savoy's intellectual discourse, there is the joke aspect of it. there is the works that he prefers, which are the sort of long philosophical excurs, and it's the contemporary political interventions. and i've always thought that these were a choice. like you could have the jokester, you could have the contemporary political intervention, or you could have a long excurs. onus on shelling. and i realized that it's not a choice. they are all concurrent. and the reason why they're all concurrent is because, and we're lucky to see this now, there's this war on what hegel calls the ready-made. anytime you do a presentation, you have to understand the sort of ironies. you have to understand the idea that there's a war on like the kind of tendencies of bourgeois narrative and just the readyades of the thought toolbox. that we're working with, that the jokes, the serious slaughter tyke, the shelling, the a, and the discussions of what's going on now, all kind of are interdependent dialectically. so i just wanted to say that, and i wanted to just briefly just hit a couple of notes about the polish regimen in haiti and the constitution.
Slavoj Žižek
did i simplify something?
did i simplify something?
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
well, no, i just wanted.
well, no, i just wanted.
Slavoj Žižek
declare
declare
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
so, you know. the constitution is really, really interesting because what it says is that haiti is an abolitionist nation. haiti is black and everyone who decides to remain in haiti are black members of this radical abolition. am am i right?
so, you know. the constitution is really, really interesting because what it says is that haiti is an abolitionist nation. haiti is black and everyone who decides to remain in haiti are black members of this radical abolition. am am i right?
Slavoj Žižek
because.
because.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
well.
well.
Slavoj Žižek
know know that it says a wonderful thing. it says every citizen of haiti, independently of the color of his skin is black. that's a wonderful because we think the opposite. the good blacks should be white.
know know that it says a wonderful thing. it says every citizen of haiti, independently of the color of his skin is black. that's a wonderful because we think the opposite. the good blacks should be white.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
so,, yeah. so, i mean, this is a model of affiliation, in terms of radical political abolitionist citizenship. so the other people, in terms of the french, they were said, okay, you could leave. or you could be purged, right? but those are three different stages. you can either, no matter who you are, join this nation. you can go back to marseille, or you can be purged. i just wanted to point that out. and then finally, and related to that, because i'm just going in the order, this notion of the surplus, right, in terms of the european union particularly. and it's interesting because i remember balabar early on, wrote all these theoretical texts when i was in grad school. when the eu really was just cohering. i want to just gently retort to my friend here and say, like, we have enough abundance, we have enough technological innovation, and we have enough wealth where we can imagine the kind of stability that you were talking about with the eu that doesn't involve the surplus exploitation of the global south, right? that. yeah, yeah. and then we only have one more point.
so,, yeah. so, i mean, this is a model of affiliation, in terms of radical political abolitionist citizenship. so the other people, in terms of the french, they were said, okay, you could leave. or you could be purged, right? but those are three different stages. you can either, no matter who you are, join this nation. you can go back to marseille, or you can be purged. i just wanted to point that out. and then finally, and related to that, because i'm just going in the order, this notion of the surplus, right, in terms of the european union particularly. and it's interesting because i remember balabar early on, wrote all these theoretical texts when i was in grad school. when the eu really was just cohering. i want to just gently retort to my friend here and say, like, we have enough abundance, we have enough technological innovation, and we have enough wealth where we can imagine the kind of stability that you were talking about with the eu that doesn't involve the surplus exploitation of the global south, right? that. yeah, yeah. and then we only have one more point.
Slavoj Žižek
only add to this. europe is basically egotist. but my hope is that with ukraine war and so on, we will become finally aware of the fact that the times are over when we can just care about our welfare and then let the world go to hell and so on. this game of our within our walls limited wealth
only add to this. europe is basically egotist. but my hope is that with ukraine war and so on, we will become finally aware of the fact that the times are over when we can just care about our welfare and then let the world go to hell and so on. this game of our within our walls limited wealth
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
it's over. yeah and then my last point is just that on this question of rapture, rojava, rogers, and religion, that's a lot. but you know, the millenarian strand that involves rapture is a really, really, i think, dangerous floodgate of anti-semitism, anti-muslim sentiment. and it's interesting theologically to contrast that with what savoy writes about, which is the catholic focus on the crucifixion, not on the rapture and not on the transcendence. and there's a whole hegelian legacy of thinking about the three and the one in christ, and that when christ is on the cross and says, you know, why have i forsaken me? when he is at his most godlike, he is his most human. and related to rogers and finally rojava, and then i'll shut up. rogers, mimi rogers. this rapture. that you're talking about when you were talking about. yeah, yeah. i mean, i think that this is a very, like, it's a reconfiguration of job. you know, in this really, really profound way. which gets us back to this question.
it's over. yeah and then my last point is just that on this question of rapture, rojava, rogers, and religion, that's a lot. but you know, the millenarian strand that involves rapture is a really, really, i think, dangerous floodgate of anti-semitism, anti-muslim sentiment. and it's interesting theologically to contrast that with what savoy writes about, which is the catholic focus on the crucifixion, not on the rapture and not on the transcendence. and there's a whole hegelian legacy of thinking about the three and the one in christ, and that when christ is on the cross and says, you know, why have i forsaken me? when he is at his most godlike, he is his most human. and related to rogers and finally rojava, and then i'll shut up. rogers, mimi rogers. this rapture. that you're talking about when you were talking about. yeah, yeah. i mean, i think that this is a very, like, it's a reconfiguration of job. you know, in this really, really profound way. which gets us back to this question.
Slavoj Žižek
person can i no no it's not a bad job can i ask you why you drew even catholics, christians, why were you so stupid, all of you, catholics, all of us, to allow when there was that constantine where they, in third century, where they retroactively decided what feeds the bible. why were they so stupid to leave the book of job in there? because it's for me the most subversive, incredible part of the bible, if i were to be interested in. christianity as an edifice to hold power and so on, blah blah, it would go out, all that. yeah, i didn't make that decision.
person can i no no it's not a bad job can i ask you why you drew even catholics, christians, why were you so stupid, all of you, catholics, all of us, to allow when there was that constantine where they, in third century, where they retroactively decided what feeds the bible. why were they so stupid to leave the book of job in there? because it's for me the most subversive, incredible part of the bible, if i were to be interested in. christianity as an edifice to hold power and so on, blah blah, it would go out, all that. yeah, i didn't make that decision.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
and then you know, and then just to wrap up about rojava, because i was in offbau sent me, i there. no, i was in zurich with offau an organization. during may day and i met the battalions fighting in rojava and it's really interesting because what they did, you talked about anarchism and you talked about this sort of patriarchal authority and you talked about queer theory and the family. what they did in rojava was really fascinating. they took a pretty top-down anti-imperialist marxist-leninist model and completely reinvigorated it with queer theory, with feminist critique of the family. with all kinds of decentralization, anarcho-feminist, and queer theory models, not in... not in opposed to their sort of anti-imperialist marxist model, but strictly as supplementary, right? and i just thought about it because, you know, again, i had mentioned professor morosco at hunter in the political science department and her book on hegel and fanon and adorno. but it's also my understanding that her current work is really looking at this sort of the construction of the family. and there's a lot of resources there. so that's what i wanted to say. wrap up and then that's it but i mean i feel like i had some questions but we should probably
and then you know, and then just to wrap up about rojava, because i was in offbau sent me, i there. no, i was in zurich with offau an organization. during may day and i met the battalions fighting in rojava and it's really interesting because what they did, you talked about anarchism and you talked about this sort of patriarchal authority and you talked about queer theory and the family. what they did in rojava was really fascinating. they took a pretty top-down anti-imperialist marxist-leninist model and completely reinvigorated it with queer theory, with feminist critique of the family. with all kinds of decentralization, anarcho-feminist, and queer theory models, not in... not in opposed to their sort of anti-imperialist marxist model, but strictly as supplementary, right? and i just thought about it because, you know, again, i had mentioned professor morosco at hunter in the political science department and her book on hegel and fanon and adorno. but it's also my understanding that her current work is really looking at this sort of the construction of the family. and there's a lot of resources there. so that's what i wanted to say. wrap up and then that's it but i mean i feel like i had some questions but we should probably
Slavoj Žižek
be open.
be open.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
right. if
right. if
Slavoj Žižek
briefly reply it's very important. first, i know who is the guy who is now for years in prison, the head of that pkk, whatever forget
briefly reply it's very important. first, i know who is the guy who is now for years in prison, the head of that pkk, whatever forget
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
like an o and a and x and i'm not good at
like an o and a and x and i'm not good at
Slavoj Žižek
yeah yeah yeah yeah .
yeah yeah yeah yeah .
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
it pizza, yeah.
it pizza, yeah.
Slavoj Žižek
peace.
peace.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
in prison the leader ofds. his theoretical writings, it's taking this top-down family model, parental. yeah. i
in prison the leader ofds. his theoretical writings, it's taking this top-down family model, parental. yeah. i
Slavoj Žižek
d.
d.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
it like crane.
it like crane.
Slavoj Žižek
i know because i know people who know him, have contact with him in prison. he reads now feminism, quantum physics. whatever, everything. and he's a wonderful guy. he knows me, you know how i learned this. sorry, it's a stupid anecdote, but it's a wonderful one. once i was... trigger warning, it's a little bit obscene, but in a very friendly way. once i was in turkey and some stupid journalist was annoying me, like, just a couple of short questions, quick answers. okay, then it went into this totally non-theoretical private direction, like, what's the best ideal situation in which you would like to find yourself? you don't ask me this if you are aware of how my dirty mind works. i told him, my ideal situation is to be in bed with a beautiful naked lady and debate philosophy with her. two days afterwards, this guy...
i know because i know people who know him, have contact with him in prison. he reads now feminism, quantum physics. whatever, everything. and he's a wonderful guy. he knows me, you know how i learned this. sorry, it's a stupid anecdote, but it's a wonderful one. once i was... trigger warning, it's a little bit obscene, but in a very friendly way. once i was in turkey and some stupid journalist was annoying me, like, just a couple of short questions, quick answers. okay, then it went into this totally non-theoretical private direction, like, what's the best ideal situation in which you would like to find yourself? you don't ask me this if you are aware of how my dirty mind works. i told him, my ideal situation is to be in bed with a beautiful naked lady and debate philosophy with her. two days afterwards, this guy...
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
i forgot his name.
i forgot his name.
Slavoj Žižek
wrote from prison an open letter to this journal claiming i agree with professor zijek, i would also like to be. how can you not like this guy? but quite seriously, what you said is so important, it's miraculous. it's how something, the kurdish resistance that people were dismissing at, you know, just killing totalitarian got into this. i mean it's one of the miracles.
wrote from prison an open letter to this journal claiming i agree with professor zijek, i would also like to be. how can you not like this guy? but quite seriously, what you said is so important, it's miraculous. it's how something, the kurdish resistance that people were dismissing at, you know, just killing totalitarian got into this. i mean it's one of the miracles.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
so. and i mean, the best works critiquing neoliberalism and capital come from that queer theory and feminist lens. so to graft that onto a real militant praxis where you're actually fighting, you are the most effective fighting formation against isis, that's really. i.
so. and i mean, the best works critiquing neoliberalism and capital come from that queer theory and feminist lens. so to graft that onto a real militant praxis where you're actually fighting, you are the most effective fighting formation against isis, that's really. i.
Slavoj Žižek
do you know? i hope you must know better this wasn't a myth that among their fighters there were many women. they had women. but another thing i just want to add, it's interesting, it's extremely important. what you said about jokes, and i know this from my own experience, yugoslav balkan war, from historical experience that, you know, jokes are not just jokes. it's my whole point, i repeat it. when you are really in deep shit, tragedy, mass murders, it. too early, it's still too traumatic for you. to adopt a properly tragic attitude of more mourning, the only way to do it is through jokes. and this was confirmed when i... first learned that, you know that in poland already in the world during world war ii and after, there was a whole series by the jews of auschwitz jokes. and that was that idea it's so traumatic that we cannot play a tragedy or blah blah blah. no's when things, you know, tragedy implies a certain dignity for you as a weak like somebody is beating you, you open your shirt, beat me, but you will never kill my spirit. no, when you are really down. and i was so glad to discover that the well-known massacre during the bosnian war, the city of srebrenica. they have now, and following your instruction, i will not tell you, not even one of them, because they are undescribably filthy, even i was shocked. but they have such, yes, such, they have don't provoke me too much, because no, but what i want to say, they have a whole tradition of incredible jokes, and i spoke with them, and they told me, sorry, it's still too hot. too traumatic for us. we cannot yet afford. this is why my other point, and with this i will not take too much time, i'll finish. first. that's why it's something so profoundly true in the fact that the film about holocaust. most of them, the best are comedies. it's necessary. it would be still even today a fake to do it as a tragedy and so on. and will and i don't even, i think la vita bella, benigni, even you know what i don't like in that movie? i met in italy the one who wrote the script for beni and he was shocked by my idea but agreed with it. you saw the movie, i will not lose time. you remember? the father with his son in concentration camp probably auschwitz and to make the situation for his son tolerable, he invents a lie that it's really just a big competition test. if you survive, you get a big prize. they can leave if they want at any moment blah blah blah. but the end of the movie screws everything up. because at the end you are supposed to cry. the sun survives and blah, blah, blah. i imagined a much more comical but at the same time totally desperate ending of the movie. when the father played by benini himself is taken to be executed, he tried to turn it in joke, mockingly like, oh, it's all a joke. shall. but what if through some small gesture at that moment he would discover that his son also all the time knew the truth, but just figned to believe his father to make it easier for him, for this father, so that it was much easier for his father to be able to say to him, oh at least my son doesn't know the seriousness it. wouldn't that be a truly desperate ending, you know? but they so the really good one who did this, liliana kavanier, who do you know pasqualino sete bellette. the other cult. lena wertmüller, sorry. that one precisely because it's more to the, is's much more desperate, serious. if i were to choose one, i will... stick to that movie. you should see it. you get everything today, but i come from a happy country. in contrast to you, i don't know how it is here. we are such a small shit of a country that the big companies don't care if we download through pirate bay and so on. we are too small a market because you know, big company must invest to follow and we are free. you can freely download everything. so sorry, i end. yeah
do you know? i hope you must know better this wasn't a myth that among their fighters there were many women. they had women. but another thing i just want to add, it's interesting, it's extremely important. what you said about jokes, and i know this from my own experience, yugoslav balkan war, from historical experience that, you know, jokes are not just jokes. it's my whole point, i repeat it. when you are really in deep shit, tragedy, mass murders, it. too early, it's still too traumatic for you. to adopt a properly tragic attitude of more mourning, the only way to do it is through jokes. and this was confirmed when i... first learned that, you know that in poland already in the world during world war ii and after, there was a whole series by the jews of auschwitz jokes. and that was that idea it's so traumatic that we cannot play a tragedy or blah blah blah. no's when things, you know, tragedy implies a certain dignity for you as a weak like somebody is beating you, you open your shirt, beat me, but you will never kill my spirit. no, when you are really down. and i was so glad to discover that the well-known massacre during the bosnian war, the city of srebrenica. they have now, and following your instruction, i will not tell you, not even one of them, because they are undescribably filthy, even i was shocked. but they have such, yes, such, they have don't provoke me too much, because no, but what i want to say, they have a whole tradition of incredible jokes, and i spoke with them, and they told me, sorry, it's still too hot. too traumatic for us. we cannot yet afford. this is why my other point, and with this i will not take too much time, i'll finish. first. that's why it's something so profoundly true in the fact that the film about holocaust. most of them, the best are comedies. it's necessary. it would be still even today a fake to do it as a tragedy and so on. and will and i don't even, i think la vita bella, benigni, even you know what i don't like in that movie? i met in italy the one who wrote the script for beni and he was shocked by my idea but agreed with it. you saw the movie, i will not lose time. you remember? the father with his son in concentration camp probably auschwitz and to make the situation for his son tolerable, he invents a lie that it's really just a big competition test. if you survive, you get a big prize. they can leave if they want at any moment blah blah blah. but the end of the movie screws everything up. because at the end you are supposed to cry. the sun survives and blah, blah, blah. i imagined a much more comical but at the same time totally desperate ending of the movie. when the father played by benini himself is taken to be executed, he tried to turn it in joke, mockingly like, oh, it's all a joke. shall. but what if through some small gesture at that moment he would discover that his son also all the time knew the truth, but just figned to believe his father to make it easier for him, for this father, so that it was much easier for his father to be able to say to him, oh at least my son doesn't know the seriousness it. wouldn't that be a truly desperate ending, you know? but they so the really good one who did this, liliana kavanier, who do you know pasqualino sete bellette. the other cult. lena wertmüller, sorry. that one precisely because it's more to the, is's much more desperate, serious. if i were to choose one, i will... stick to that movie. you should see it. you get everything today, but i come from a happy country. in contrast to you, i don't know how it is here. we are such a small shit of a country that the big companies don't care if we download through pirate bay and so on. we are too small a market because you know, big company must invest to follow and we are free. you can freely download everything. so sorry, i end. yeah
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
we at hunter care very much about intellectual property rights.
we at hunter care very much about intellectual property rights.
Slavoj Žižek
why?
why?
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
anyway, okay, so we should just open this up. i'm going to squeeze in a quick question, but then we're going to pass it pass to mike. actually, i'm not going to squeeze in a quick question because we're running out of time. so here you go, sir. you, the green guy, sorry.
anyway, okay, so we should just open this up. i'm going to squeeze in a quick question, but then we're going to pass it pass to mike. actually, i'm not going to squeeze in a quick question because we're running out of time. so here you go, sir. you, the green guy, sorry.
Audience Member 1
people?
people?
Slavoj Žižek
okay working class.
okay working class.
Audience Member 1
the elected person is a working class from a labor party and the confrontant is a neo-fascist
the elected person is a working class from a labor party and the confrontant is a neo-fascist
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Audience Member 1
yeah, so any, i mean, how does this?
yeah, so any, i mean, how does this?
Slavoj Žižek
you know why it is important? because i think brazil is in some sense ahead of us. it makes, i'm not saying something very deep, it's just an observation. you know, they have a true choice that... d. this. this centrist benevolent american democratic liberal democracy. they should be aware that some of them are telling me now that we have to find trump, forget about your leftist agenda, we should just redeem, keep alive. no, i think the only way to save what is worth saving in liberal democracy is to move to the left. terrorist left but what lula is doing i know all the criticism of lula and so on but i think lula is part of a movement which is i think maybe you know more disagree with me it's nonetheless i followed closely i even intervened there in i made in my broken spanish some statements for chile for bolivia my god linera the greatest guy is my friend then for colombia, no, something is important is happening there. a radical in bolivia, isn this wonderful, radical left came to power and in the 10 years, even 12 of first morales regime, they didn't screw up the economy. they kept the system working, but really the ordinary people lived much better and linara explained this to me how he did it. he is a genius. he said in a cynical, benevolent way, evo morales sits there, smokes coke, whatever, leave him there. he said, for example, you know that when morales took over, down there in the valley, santa cruz. there were the rich guys opposing morales and unfortunately i must say they were from my own part of the world. the main group there were fascist ustashi immigrants from croatia. so they wanted secession. two break bolivia into two and linera, you know what he did. i love this. he addressed the army because the army never likes a state to break down. so it was incredible, everybody thought army, the right wingers, but the army saved morales' regime and so what i want to say is that that's why, wasn't this a miracle? you remember there was a coup d'etat by that nominal leader, crazy lady who brought a heavy thick bible there. but then a half year later, elections and they won again. it's incredible. i think this is, i hope with all the ups. and downs like it made me very sad when in chile they lost the key referendum for constitution. so i'm sorry if this will sound too soft but i don't have any big hope in venezuela, nicaragua, cuba. this should be our models, you know, this is something to look for. it is, in some sense, a more radical left. but at the same time, you know, they know how to resist this eternal leftist temptation. let's do some radical moves, then we will screw economy, everything, and then... when we lose power, we will withdraw to academia and write excellent thick books about why we had to lose because of imperialism and so on and so on. you know, what i call this... principled pragmatism. you are. a principled radical leftist, but you resist the temptation of, you know, even if we lose power or whatever. and you know, linara told me that. his. s here was learning himself new economic politics, learning so immediately. we have to change our politics after the final victory of the october revolution and so on and so on. so i don't know what you think, okay, i don't know the details of the situation, but what i wanted to say is that that's what i like in brazil. the choice is clear. neo-fascism versus a modern, but nonetheless not modern as simply part of the liberal establishment. nonetheless authentically more radical left. this is and this should be again our message to liberals. we appreciate your legacy freedom of the press blah blah blah but the way to maintain this legacy is not let's move more to the center so that so that we don't lose cent. no. trump was a genius here. you know, when people, after trump's eight years ago,06 victory... you know that people were telling to trump, you are too radical, you should move more to the center. trump did the exact opposite. and we should do the same. i don't think that the way to save what is worth saying of liberal democracy is to be obsessed with this, let's not lose the middle ground. this opportunistic middle ground is disintegrating.
you know why it is important? because i think brazil is in some sense ahead of us. it makes, i'm not saying something very deep, it's just an observation. you know, they have a true choice that... d. this. this centrist benevolent american democratic liberal democracy. they should be aware that some of them are telling me now that we have to find trump, forget about your leftist agenda, we should just redeem, keep alive. no, i think the only way to save what is worth saving in liberal democracy is to move to the left. terrorist left but what lula is doing i know all the criticism of lula and so on but i think lula is part of a movement which is i think maybe you know more disagree with me it's nonetheless i followed closely i even intervened there in i made in my broken spanish some statements for chile for bolivia my god linera the greatest guy is my friend then for colombia, no, something is important is happening there. a radical in bolivia, isn this wonderful, radical left came to power and in the 10 years, even 12 of first morales regime, they didn't screw up the economy. they kept the system working, but really the ordinary people lived much better and linara explained this to me how he did it. he is a genius. he said in a cynical, benevolent way, evo morales sits there, smokes coke, whatever, leave him there. he said, for example, you know that when morales took over, down there in the valley, santa cruz. there were the rich guys opposing morales and unfortunately i must say they were from my own part of the world. the main group there were fascist ustashi immigrants from croatia. so they wanted secession. two break bolivia into two and linera, you know what he did. i love this. he addressed the army because the army never likes a state to break down. so it was incredible, everybody thought army, the right wingers, but the army saved morales' regime and so what i want to say is that that's why, wasn't this a miracle? you remember there was a coup d'etat by that nominal leader, crazy lady who brought a heavy thick bible there. but then a half year later, elections and they won again. it's incredible. i think this is, i hope with all the ups. and downs like it made me very sad when in chile they lost the key referendum for constitution. so i'm sorry if this will sound too soft but i don't have any big hope in venezuela, nicaragua, cuba. this should be our models, you know, this is something to look for. it is, in some sense, a more radical left. but at the same time, you know, they know how to resist this eternal leftist temptation. let's do some radical moves, then we will screw economy, everything, and then... when we lose power, we will withdraw to academia and write excellent thick books about why we had to lose because of imperialism and so on and so on. you know, what i call this... principled pragmatism. you are. a principled radical leftist, but you resist the temptation of, you know, even if we lose power or whatever. and you know, linara told me that. his. s here was learning himself new economic politics, learning so immediately. we have to change our politics after the final victory of the october revolution and so on and so on. so i don't know what you think, okay, i don't know the details of the situation, but what i wanted to say is that that's what i like in brazil. the choice is clear. neo-fascism versus a modern, but nonetheless not modern as simply part of the liberal establishment. nonetheless authentically more radical left. this is and this should be again our message to liberals. we appreciate your legacy freedom of the press blah blah blah but the way to maintain this legacy is not let's move more to the center so that so that we don't lose cent. no. trump was a genius here. you know, when people, after trump's eight years ago,06 victory... you know that people were telling to trump, you are too radical, you should move more to the center. trump did the exact opposite. and we should do the same. i don't think that the way to save what is worth saying of liberal democracy is to be obsessed with this, let's not lose the middle ground. this opportunistic middle ground is disintegrating.
Audience Member 2
i have a question from a student.
i have a question from a student.
Slavoj Žižek
in the back
in the back
Audience Member 2
in heaven and disorder, you write about how you met julian assange and your time in visiting him when they tried to cover a cup of coffee. can you talk about that experience and what julian assange means for our democracy?
in heaven and disorder, you write about how you met julian assange and your time in visiting him when they tried to cover a cup of coffee. can you talk about that experience and what julian assange means for our democracy?
Slavoj Žižek
i think, and here i'm even fair, and with all my critique of putin and so on, it's very sad that we left to putin this option of, you know, snowden, assange. i mean, for me, it's always ukraine and assange. the worst thing to do is to say, now the big danger is russian imperialism, so let's forget about assange and so on and so on. the reason i support assange is not so much those all the early wikileaks documents, it's much more i think assange's key work is, you know that he wrote a book which is much more subversive and passed not quite but more or less unnoticed. he wrote a book on google where he defined google as a private version of nsa. national security agency. and he so he the message of assange for me is, today, in the west. and that's how also assoun answered the reproach, but there is dictatorship in china, in other parts. why do you focus on the united states? and i took it from him, a very intelligent answer. he says, the good thing, ironically, about china, russia, is that there... oppression ich felt. you know, nobody has the illusion. of that there is no state oppression. while the dangerous thing in the west is that, as i use always this formula, as i put it somewhere the most dangerous form of unfreedom is unfreedom which you even experience as freedom. what is more freedom than to surf around the web, blah, blah, blah, but you're already totally controlled there and so on and so on. this is, i think, his basic message. and it's totally irrational what is happening. i mean, assange is a little bit dry legal guy, but he has wonderful... he didn't lose his spirit. i will put it like this. you know, the last time i met him, at the time, the incident with coffee in prison, you think we talked about freedom. no, we talked about new tv series. this was wonderful. we talked about he. you know that theory based on philip dick novel man in the high castle, he gave me a wonderful reading that the alternate version. where. it happened the way it happened. is not simply the truth, that it's another and that how there is a third totally repressed absent point of reference. i will not go into it, but i like this so much that in spite of this horrible situation, because the authorities, british authorities, brutally used the pandemic to put him in an impossible, for example, when he married in prison. it had to be done. through a glass. it's a scandal. a week before, a big mafioso serial killer. got married in prison and they were given a big room, 30 guests and so on and so on. i mean, it's totally, and also the whole legal base, you know, sorry, he's not an american citizen. under what conditions can he be? accused can he be? brought to court for breaking american laws and so on. and it's such a scandal and especially in these days, today. we should bear in mind that. and he also told me the entire story of snowden. that's snowden. i forgot his name,. sorry? yeah, yeah, you know, because he was engaged in it. you know snowden, uh... did not choose russia. you remember 10 or how many years ago he was stuck in hong kong. china said, okay, okay, he can stay. they didn't want trouble with united states and china said, okay, okay. two weeks they gave him there and then they said he has to go. and asange told me, he and his friends were desperately looking for another place. first it was latin america. there were some transport problems. it wasn't possible. then they turned to europe and all these freedom-loving european countries, france, sweden and so on, no. nobody wanted him. that's why he doesn't even like. he is almost courageous when in an interview some two, three years ago, snowden said openly, i know they manipulate me, i don't like to be here in russia, i would like to move to a european country. i mean, it was all so humiliating. so again, precisely in this euphoria for ukraine, and i'm pro-ukrainian, we should not... forget about this. other site. how, you know, we have enough. blood on our own hands. it's so crucial. what i am just afraid is that how ukrainian war is now exploited to forget about. that to justify all that and this is what really makes me said there are even some. i m for ukraine but also when it's needed critical towards ukraine at least two three things first, and this is something shameful for the west you know that the west is already imposing on ukrainians their own neoliberal economic model. and ukrainians were aware of it. they tried to block it. for example, you know that over one-third of the best, and they have the best earth, that black earth, is already owned by foreign agricultural conglomerates, big companies. they are already brutally imposing on ukraine a neoliberal model. the other thing which is horrible is that it shocked many leftist friends of ukraine. that... one of the people around zelensky, not zelensky himself, protested that when you remember the last nobel peace prize, it was given to some ukrainian humanitarian charity agency and to some belorian and russian. ukrainian idiots close to zelensky, to the top, protested, claiming, yeah, they protested, but they didn't achieve anything. so isn't it a shame that citizens of a country which is now attacking ukraine got the nobel prize. this is for me. madness, they want to stigmatize russia as such. and i warn them, they are talking the same language as russia. instead of saying putin doesn't really stand for what's best in the russian people. we are fighting universal fight. they are repeating from the other side it alexander dugin and russian bullshit about how it's russian truth versus european truth. moment we say this, we are lost, i think. so it's again, it's very very very said. i think we have to take care of this. the most dangerous thing now is to say everything is subordinate to russia, to beating the russians, so forget about all other things and so on. sorry, i speak too much. please.
i think, and here i'm even fair, and with all my critique of putin and so on, it's very sad that we left to putin this option of, you know, snowden, assange. i mean, for me, it's always ukraine and assange. the worst thing to do is to say, now the big danger is russian imperialism, so let's forget about assange and so on and so on. the reason i support assange is not so much those all the early wikileaks documents, it's much more i think assange's key work is, you know that he wrote a book which is much more subversive and passed not quite but more or less unnoticed. he wrote a book on google where he defined google as a private version of nsa. national security agency. and he so he the message of assange for me is, today, in the west. and that's how also assoun answered the reproach, but there is dictatorship in china, in other parts. why do you focus on the united states? and i took it from him, a very intelligent answer. he says, the good thing, ironically, about china, russia, is that there... oppression ich felt. you know, nobody has the illusion. of that there is no state oppression. while the dangerous thing in the west is that, as i use always this formula, as i put it somewhere the most dangerous form of unfreedom is unfreedom which you even experience as freedom. what is more freedom than to surf around the web, blah, blah, blah, but you're already totally controlled there and so on and so on. this is, i think, his basic message. and it's totally irrational what is happening. i mean, assange is a little bit dry legal guy, but he has wonderful... he didn't lose his spirit. i will put it like this. you know, the last time i met him, at the time, the incident with coffee in prison, you think we talked about freedom. no, we talked about new tv series. this was wonderful. we talked about he. you know that theory based on philip dick novel man in the high castle, he gave me a wonderful reading that the alternate version. where. it happened the way it happened. is not simply the truth, that it's another and that how there is a third totally repressed absent point of reference. i will not go into it, but i like this so much that in spite of this horrible situation, because the authorities, british authorities, brutally used the pandemic to put him in an impossible, for example, when he married in prison. it had to be done. through a glass. it's a scandal. a week before, a big mafioso serial killer. got married in prison and they were given a big room, 30 guests and so on and so on. i mean, it's totally, and also the whole legal base, you know, sorry, he's not an american citizen. under what conditions can he be? accused can he be? brought to court for breaking american laws and so on. and it's such a scandal and especially in these days, today. we should bear in mind that. and he also told me the entire story of snowden. that's snowden. i forgot his name,. sorry? yeah, yeah, you know, because he was engaged in it. you know snowden, uh... did not choose russia. you remember 10 or how many years ago he was stuck in hong kong. china said, okay, okay, he can stay. they didn't want trouble with united states and china said, okay, okay. two weeks they gave him there and then they said he has to go. and asange told me, he and his friends were desperately looking for another place. first it was latin america. there were some transport problems. it wasn't possible. then they turned to europe and all these freedom-loving european countries, france, sweden and so on, no. nobody wanted him. that's why he doesn't even like. he is almost courageous when in an interview some two, three years ago, snowden said openly, i know they manipulate me, i don't like to be here in russia, i would like to move to a european country. i mean, it was all so humiliating. so again, precisely in this euphoria for ukraine, and i'm pro-ukrainian, we should not... forget about this. other site. how, you know, we have enough. blood on our own hands. it's so crucial. what i am just afraid is that how ukrainian war is now exploited to forget about. that to justify all that and this is what really makes me said there are even some. i m for ukraine but also when it's needed critical towards ukraine at least two three things first, and this is something shameful for the west you know that the west is already imposing on ukrainians their own neoliberal economic model. and ukrainians were aware of it. they tried to block it. for example, you know that over one-third of the best, and they have the best earth, that black earth, is already owned by foreign agricultural conglomerates, big companies. they are already brutally imposing on ukraine a neoliberal model. the other thing which is horrible is that it shocked many leftist friends of ukraine. that... one of the people around zelensky, not zelensky himself, protested that when you remember the last nobel peace prize, it was given to some ukrainian humanitarian charity agency and to some belorian and russian. ukrainian idiots close to zelensky, to the top, protested, claiming, yeah, they protested, but they didn't achieve anything. so isn't it a shame that citizens of a country which is now attacking ukraine got the nobel prize. this is for me. madness, they want to stigmatize russia as such. and i warn them, they are talking the same language as russia. instead of saying putin doesn't really stand for what's best in the russian people. we are fighting universal fight. they are repeating from the other side it alexander dugin and russian bullshit about how it's russian truth versus european truth. moment we say this, we are lost, i think. so it's again, it's very very very said. i think we have to take care of this. the most dangerous thing now is to say everything is subordinate to russia, to beating the russians, so forget about all other things and so on. sorry, i speak too much. please.
Audience Member 4
um i speak less so uh following his question about brazil, now we have netanyahu in israel..
um i speak less so uh following his question about brazil, now we have netanyahu in israel..
Slavoj Žižek
me gives me. my good friend udi aloni keeps me informed and this is worse than nightmare. this is sorry to interrupt you but... okay, finish your question. i'm sorry.
me gives me. my good friend udi aloni keeps me informed and this is worse than nightmare. this is sorry to interrupt you but... okay, finish your question. i'm sorry.
Audience Member 4
no, no, i was in switzerland in lugano 2014. i have a most liberal friend. he was complaining about the... i i knew at that time this is going to go through all over the europe and come and hit america. whatever may be the philosophical contours of this, it happened. i think in a way, i'm sorry, i'm making a commentary, in a way, there is a white privilege in this country. white privilege.
no, no, i was in switzerland in lugano 2014. i have a most liberal friend. he was complaining about the... i i knew at that time this is going to go through all over the europe and come and hit america. whatever may be the philosophical contours of this, it happened. i think in a way, i'm sorry, i'm making a commentary, in a way, there is a white privilege in this country. white privilege.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Audience Member 4
so anytime that is threatened by now they are using immigrants as capeboards to do that, i think that's happening all over europe, nazi, germany, france, whatever you want to say. so my thinking is when i was 60s, some of the people called hippies, the nomad hippies. they told me, we failed the revolution here in the 60s. so america was set up in such a way there can be a revolution, there can only be evolution. so do you recommend a kind of starting a fabian society movement in america? forget about.
so anytime that is threatened by now they are using immigrants as capeboards to do that, i think that's happening all over europe, nazi, germany, france, whatever you want to say. so my thinking is when i was 60s, some of the people called hippies, the nomad hippies. they told me, we failed the revolution here in the 60s. so america was set up in such a way there can be a revolution, there can only be evolution. so do you recommend a kind of starting a fabian society movement in america? forget about.
Slavoj Žižek
i know the situation i think is much more tragic. tragic in the sense that again, with all my unconditional support for lgbt plus and all that. but... the way some of this, even feminist protest is formulated, it can be also exploited by. western establishment. in a slightly racist way, like, you know, we are the only true feminists, the undeveloped countries are male soists, we have to export our... so what i will, but the true danger i see, i will make another point here, is this one. you know, don't underestimate the ability of the. hegemonic ruling system to incorporate. a certain very limited mode of openness towards other. racists, women and so on. to maintain its power. for example, in england, i think it's crazy what is happening now. we got. boris johnson, white man. now we've got rishi sunak, which is much more to the right. and the one who was most to the right was, i forgot his name, kwartung, something like this, an elite. purely black african. but a totally crazy right wingeringer, his idea was the only way to keep economy going is to lower the taxes from 45 to 25% for the very rich. so, you know, and l str, a woman, so, you know, the irony. l str's government, it was a woman, an indian, an african, and it was the most right-wing government ever. in england. so again, i know this is fake feminism, fake anti-racism, but don't underestimate. the ability of the system, you know. to do this. which is why did you notice how when would the... six years ago when bernie sanders was running for it, did you noticed how the establishment pro hillary? tried to use a fact that he is an old white man in this subtle way, like they tried almost to paint him as anti-feminist or whatever. like my god, we have hillary here. and no matter what bernie did, like first they wanted to paint him as not even black solidarity. he demonstrated it when as a young guy, when martin luther king organ was there and so on. so again, don't underestimate the way i still am here a traditional marxist. the basic conflict is the one of privileged exploited and so on. but that the regime, whatever we call it, is ready to make great concessions here. the other thing is, and this is also, many leftists don't agree with me here. how the system is manipulating the immigrant issue. day uh... like to scare ordinary people with immigrants, you know, so that usually we then get this totally paradoxical situation. the further you move up on the social scale, the more they pretend to be for immigrants. and they play this subtle game that, oh, it's the primitive lower classes who are, it's an ingenious strategy of to have a conflict between lower. classes and then you on the top can play this game of and so on. it's a very messy situation you know and a lot of work has to be done here like what you will say to a common worker who is afraid of losing his job because you have immigrants who are ready to work for lesser salary. it's too cynical to tell him, sorry guy, world immigrants, you have to sacrifice yourself and so on and so on. which is why now i will say something for which many leftists criticize me. i aim for much larger opening absolutely to immigrants and so on but do not forget that. opening the gates to immigrants is not a long-term solution. the first thing, at least in europe, statistics are clear. you know that the immigrants are mostly, yes, you get women, children, the privileged one. there is a tremendous illegal smuggling of immigrants industry. it turns around billions of dollars and so on. so i always ask myself, but who are the poor guys who remain there in syria, in iraq? so i think that it's not just let's open our gates, everything. will solve. we need, it may sound utopian, but we the only way out will be some kind of a global rearrangement of economic situation if we keep the present situation, of international neoocolonial exploitation, the result will just be that. poverty will explode in third world, there will be immigrant pressure, and then it may well happen what happened now in sweden. in italy and so on. debt. there will be an... not authentic, but how should i call it? lower class populism which will buy the fear of immigrants. it's in italy, it's against even in sweden and so on. i think... i agree that one should be more open towards immigrants, but it's not as simple as that. immigrants are the result of certain failed policies. for example, it's united states and up to a point europe which caused immigration. you know, one of the most stupid things were the final occupation of iraq, the things in syria and... libya. without this, things would have been much more different. i'm just shocked at the stupidity of american politics in occupying iraq. it looks that they were really so stupid that they thought, oh, iraqi people will awaken and find... no, they were so stupid instead of using saddam's apparatus. his bath party, which were the only people qualified to rule. they. excluded them and of course they opened up the space for islamic more fundamental so that isn't this the irony that the american occupation, overthrowing of saddam. basically opened up the space for iran. to more or less control the situation in iraq. another thing, in spite of all his horrors, saddam was a secular nationalist, basically. he was never, he flirted, but he was not a muslim, which means that there was a whole educated middle class women in position. they disappeared now. or take christianity. saddam opportunistically left christians alone, even what was his name, not tariq kaziz, whatever, his foreign minister was iraqi christian. what happens as the result of american occupation of iraq? more than half of the christians left the country. so it's this total madness that american intervention made. iraq open to iranian inflow. much more fundamentalist and so on and so on. in libya it's a similar crazy situation. it was bad under gaddafi, but what we have now it's probably even worse. it's a failed state, non-functioning state. the situation is so messy and what i really fear is again that... debt. if we. who try to be more radical left by this liberal game of, you know, let's protect liberal center and so on, that then the new populist right will succeed in canalizing in its direction more and more of this new right. but don't misunderstand another thing. this is what what happened already in england. the genius, sorry i hate her, of margaret thatcher was that she got something. arrogant labor party took it for granted that minorities are on our side. so they didn't, but margaret thatcher got it. there were many new rich indians, not american native indians, but indians, the true ones, who... who were sick and tired of this automatic idea of labor party, they will protect us. and the key to margaret thatcher's victory and even now more and more was that the newly rich indians and even many of other indians preferred... conservative party. so you know, this is the problem of the left today. even the same happened in, i read detailed analysis by the guy who unfortunately died now, mike davis, about southern texas where there are many mexican immigrants and they discovered some of them are more opposed to immigration from mexico than white people there. the situation is here very complex. there are so many traps here, so i'm more and more desperate. but i believe in miracles. no, no, not religious miracles, but look, take like what you mentioned, rojava. take although it failed, syriza in greece. things explode and let me stop. maybe another one.
i know the situation i think is much more tragic. tragic in the sense that again, with all my unconditional support for lgbt plus and all that. but... the way some of this, even feminist protest is formulated, it can be also exploited by. western establishment. in a slightly racist way, like, you know, we are the only true feminists, the undeveloped countries are male soists, we have to export our... so what i will, but the true danger i see, i will make another point here, is this one. you know, don't underestimate the ability of the. hegemonic ruling system to incorporate. a certain very limited mode of openness towards other. racists, women and so on. to maintain its power. for example, in england, i think it's crazy what is happening now. we got. boris johnson, white man. now we've got rishi sunak, which is much more to the right. and the one who was most to the right was, i forgot his name, kwartung, something like this, an elite. purely black african. but a totally crazy right wingeringer, his idea was the only way to keep economy going is to lower the taxes from 45 to 25% for the very rich. so, you know, and l str, a woman, so, you know, the irony. l str's government, it was a woman, an indian, an african, and it was the most right-wing government ever. in england. so again, i know this is fake feminism, fake anti-racism, but don't underestimate. the ability of the system, you know. to do this. which is why did you notice how when would the... six years ago when bernie sanders was running for it, did you noticed how the establishment pro hillary? tried to use a fact that he is an old white man in this subtle way, like they tried almost to paint him as anti-feminist or whatever. like my god, we have hillary here. and no matter what bernie did, like first they wanted to paint him as not even black solidarity. he demonstrated it when as a young guy, when martin luther king organ was there and so on. so again, don't underestimate the way i still am here a traditional marxist. the basic conflict is the one of privileged exploited and so on. but that the regime, whatever we call it, is ready to make great concessions here. the other thing is, and this is also, many leftists don't agree with me here. how the system is manipulating the immigrant issue. day uh... like to scare ordinary people with immigrants, you know, so that usually we then get this totally paradoxical situation. the further you move up on the social scale, the more they pretend to be for immigrants. and they play this subtle game that, oh, it's the primitive lower classes who are, it's an ingenious strategy of to have a conflict between lower. classes and then you on the top can play this game of and so on. it's a very messy situation you know and a lot of work has to be done here like what you will say to a common worker who is afraid of losing his job because you have immigrants who are ready to work for lesser salary. it's too cynical to tell him, sorry guy, world immigrants, you have to sacrifice yourself and so on and so on. which is why now i will say something for which many leftists criticize me. i aim for much larger opening absolutely to immigrants and so on but do not forget that. opening the gates to immigrants is not a long-term solution. the first thing, at least in europe, statistics are clear. you know that the immigrants are mostly, yes, you get women, children, the privileged one. there is a tremendous illegal smuggling of immigrants industry. it turns around billions of dollars and so on. so i always ask myself, but who are the poor guys who remain there in syria, in iraq? so i think that it's not just let's open our gates, everything. will solve. we need, it may sound utopian, but we the only way out will be some kind of a global rearrangement of economic situation if we keep the present situation, of international neoocolonial exploitation, the result will just be that. poverty will explode in third world, there will be immigrant pressure, and then it may well happen what happened now in sweden. in italy and so on. debt. there will be an... not authentic, but how should i call it? lower class populism which will buy the fear of immigrants. it's in italy, it's against even in sweden and so on. i think... i agree that one should be more open towards immigrants, but it's not as simple as that. immigrants are the result of certain failed policies. for example, it's united states and up to a point europe which caused immigration. you know, one of the most stupid things were the final occupation of iraq, the things in syria and... libya. without this, things would have been much more different. i'm just shocked at the stupidity of american politics in occupying iraq. it looks that they were really so stupid that they thought, oh, iraqi people will awaken and find... no, they were so stupid instead of using saddam's apparatus. his bath party, which were the only people qualified to rule. they. excluded them and of course they opened up the space for islamic more fundamental so that isn't this the irony that the american occupation, overthrowing of saddam. basically opened up the space for iran. to more or less control the situation in iraq. another thing, in spite of all his horrors, saddam was a secular nationalist, basically. he was never, he flirted, but he was not a muslim, which means that there was a whole educated middle class women in position. they disappeared now. or take christianity. saddam opportunistically left christians alone, even what was his name, not tariq kaziz, whatever, his foreign minister was iraqi christian. what happens as the result of american occupation of iraq? more than half of the christians left the country. so it's this total madness that american intervention made. iraq open to iranian inflow. much more fundamentalist and so on and so on. in libya it's a similar crazy situation. it was bad under gaddafi, but what we have now it's probably even worse. it's a failed state, non-functioning state. the situation is so messy and what i really fear is again that... debt. if we. who try to be more radical left by this liberal game of, you know, let's protect liberal center and so on, that then the new populist right will succeed in canalizing in its direction more and more of this new right. but don't misunderstand another thing. this is what what happened already in england. the genius, sorry i hate her, of margaret thatcher was that she got something. arrogant labor party took it for granted that minorities are on our side. so they didn't, but margaret thatcher got it. there were many new rich indians, not american native indians, but indians, the true ones, who... who were sick and tired of this automatic idea of labor party, they will protect us. and the key to margaret thatcher's victory and even now more and more was that the newly rich indians and even many of other indians preferred... conservative party. so you know, this is the problem of the left today. even the same happened in, i read detailed analysis by the guy who unfortunately died now, mike davis, about southern texas where there are many mexican immigrants and they discovered some of them are more opposed to immigration from mexico than white people there. the situation is here very complex. there are so many traps here, so i'm more and more desperate. but i believe in miracles. no, no, not religious miracles, but look, take like what you mentioned, rojava. take although it failed, syriza in greece. things explode and let me stop. maybe another one.
Audience Member 3
let's just get one more.
let's just get one more.
Slavoj Žižek
or in the back right there. yeah in the back sorry to say i don't mean.
or in the back right there. yeah in the back sorry to say i don't mean.
Audience Member 3
in a hypocritical way.
in a hypocritical way.
Slavoj Žižek
question i will say something, sorry, immediately something very hypocritical. i want at least one woman so that then we can say hypocritically. it was not only men there was... bleak. please, you were here. no, but, okay, i didn't want, sorry, to suppress you.
question i will say something, sorry, immediately something very hypocritical. i want at least one woman so that then we can say hypocritically. it was not only men there was... bleak. please, you were here. no, but, okay, i didn't want, sorry, to suppress you.
Audience Member 3
yeah.
yeah.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah. yeah. i like this idea. women are a 60 or 55% minority. but no, but that's a true logic. yes, sorry, go on please.
yeah. yeah. i like this idea. women are a 60 or 55% minority. but no, but that's a true logic. yes, sorry, go on please.
Audience Member 3
no, i mean, thank thank you. thank you for the positive discrimination. no, i have a question about what i understand is kind of your theory of democracy or what you're...
no, i mean, thank thank you. thank you for the positive discrimination. no, i have a question about what i understand is kind of your theory of democracy or what you're...
Slavoj Žižek
yeah?
yeah?
Audience Member 3
coming to create as a theory of democracy. you mentioned certain kind of basic tokens of democracy and political theory such as the idea of law being something that we believe in or we must believe in, but it is. nevertheless conventional you also mentioned the idea of freedom as something that we must somehow recreate in our mind as a free choice but ultimately there is a conflict inherent on predestination, moral and ethical. commands that we might carry or not. you also speak about authority and the figure of the father or the mother as this figure that needs to pretend to be something different than what it actually is. so it seems as if you work posting that democracy is performative in the sense that we only. embrace the democratic principles as long as we perform the democratic. fundamentals we perform the idea of law we perform the idea of freedom and so on. and this idea of democracy gives agency to people because you must. i believe that people are capable of acting ethically despite of the fact that ethics might be a conventional.
coming to create as a theory of democracy. you mentioned certain kind of basic tokens of democracy and political theory such as the idea of law being something that we believe in or we must believe in, but it is. nevertheless conventional you also mentioned the idea of freedom as something that we must somehow recreate in our mind as a free choice but ultimately there is a conflict inherent on predestination, moral and ethical. commands that we might carry or not. you also speak about authority and the figure of the father or the mother as this figure that needs to pretend to be something different than what it actually is. so it seems as if you work posting that democracy is performative in the sense that we only. embrace the democratic principles as long as we perform the democratic. fundamentals we perform the idea of law we perform the idea of freedom and so on. and this idea of democracy gives agency to people because you must. i believe that people are capable of acting ethically despite of the fact that ethics might be a conventional.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Audience Member 3
structure but on the other hand you warn us about the fear. of ideologies or certain ideological principles that might co-opt certain people or minds and drag politics in another direction. and also on the other hand, you bring about this idea of a leader that might be able to broaden our scope and kind of create a different scenario. so i think that there is a tension, but you might explain it to us between these two things.
structure but on the other hand you warn us about the fear. of ideologies or certain ideological principles that might co-opt certain people or minds and drag politics in another direction. and also on the other hand, you bring about this idea of a leader that might be able to broaden our scope and kind of create a different scenario. so i think that there is a tension, but you might explain it to us between these two things.
Slavoj Žižek
in the thing itself. look, i had a debate 15 years ago with some venezuelans who tried to sell me this stuff. the only authentic democracy is local democracy, people organized in local communities. and then my instant obvious answer was ha, ha ha with the big brother chavez there. basically, you know, the state was there to nonetheless to provide how putin the general network, electricity and so on and so on. and for me that's why, how should i put it? it's an open question for me. i have this. beep. distrust in local democracy. it is good. but it's not just... simple quantitative enlargement like can you, to put it very simply, can you universalize it? give me es leaders. you know, many marxists told me when i proposed this line that. no, a leader is a bourgeois idea, blah, blah, blah. then i told them, give me one. radical leftist regime without a leader. even a charismatic leader from mandela to fidel castro to chavez and so on and so on. and my point is, what if it's wrong? my point is this one. you have this executive political space and what is the only way to, it's a very problematic notion, the only way to mobilize ordinary people at the level deeper than this, let's call it official institutional politicization is through a charismatic leader. now, i'm not saying that this leader should have... i power. i'm here extremely brutal, cynical, up to the point of saying maybe we need such leader banned at a certain point he should be liquidated. you know, like maybe you organize an accident or whatever. we should approach it in a creative way. i'm just saying that i don't believe in this anarchist dream that the authentic democracy is local pre-represent. and then somehow magically this will grow up and up and embrace all of all of society and so on and so on. so again, thanks very much. i fully accept your critical point that there is this tension. but again, it's a cheap hegelian answer i know. this tension is in the thing. itself. for example, just again. i have this simple question, are we aware that with immigration, mass movement, because of hunger, drought and so on, it's clear that in next decades, tens of millions, even more people will move around. and there are only two options here. either war, as it was done in the old times, one, whole people move to another area and simply try to occupy. either blah blah blah, either war or... some kind of... global cooperation not global state. in the present state of things, the idea of a world state and then what? world elections or what, is a madness. it would open up incredible space of new corruption. totally non-transparent. but again, with all these problems, in know parts of the world. becoming non fertile, dry other parts and so on. it's not even this. it's even that we have the mess in the same part. you know what was for me the truly apocalyptic scene. i was there to do a sort of that disgusting piece. why disgusting? because my stupid face is you need a perverse guide to ideology in a valley of death. but then i was shocked, you know, for me this was horrible dry, but wasn't now a couple of months ago, a mega flooding and the valley of that became a lake. we are we... it's hard. so we are will have to get to used. this is for me, i spoke about it. two days ago at princeton, the deepest, dangerous lesson that you know, when we... speak about global warming. we usually perceive it that there will be a new balance just a little bit worse. like, okay, temperature rise for , five degrees, the level of sea will raise up, but then we will have a new stability. now, what top scientists warn against is that what if there will be no new stability? what if nature will enter into what is called a true mathematical chaos? thank. simply it's in a sense unnatural nature because our spontaneous ideological notion of nature means we humans are crazy, hubris, creative. nature means reliable, repeatable patterns. what if... we lose this. and again. the only way i see is, and i cannot even imagine how, through some forms of cooperation. and when people tell me, you're utopian, i give a very simple answer, okay, i agree, maybe, even probably, but then we are lost. simple as that. islands, feudal islands will maybe survive, you know, but the world will be an undesescribable chaos. so this guy here in.
in the thing itself. look, i had a debate 15 years ago with some venezuelans who tried to sell me this stuff. the only authentic democracy is local democracy, people organized in local communities. and then my instant obvious answer was ha, ha ha with the big brother chavez there. basically, you know, the state was there to nonetheless to provide how putin the general network, electricity and so on and so on. and for me that's why, how should i put it? it's an open question for me. i have this. beep. distrust in local democracy. it is good. but it's not just... simple quantitative enlargement like can you, to put it very simply, can you universalize it? give me es leaders. you know, many marxists told me when i proposed this line that. no, a leader is a bourgeois idea, blah, blah, blah. then i told them, give me one. radical leftist regime without a leader. even a charismatic leader from mandela to fidel castro to chavez and so on and so on. and my point is, what if it's wrong? my point is this one. you have this executive political space and what is the only way to, it's a very problematic notion, the only way to mobilize ordinary people at the level deeper than this, let's call it official institutional politicization is through a charismatic leader. now, i'm not saying that this leader should have... i power. i'm here extremely brutal, cynical, up to the point of saying maybe we need such leader banned at a certain point he should be liquidated. you know, like maybe you organize an accident or whatever. we should approach it in a creative way. i'm just saying that i don't believe in this anarchist dream that the authentic democracy is local pre-represent. and then somehow magically this will grow up and up and embrace all of all of society and so on and so on. so again, thanks very much. i fully accept your critical point that there is this tension. but again, it's a cheap hegelian answer i know. this tension is in the thing. itself. for example, just again. i have this simple question, are we aware that with immigration, mass movement, because of hunger, drought and so on, it's clear that in next decades, tens of millions, even more people will move around. and there are only two options here. either war, as it was done in the old times, one, whole people move to another area and simply try to occupy. either blah blah blah, either war or... some kind of... global cooperation not global state. in the present state of things, the idea of a world state and then what? world elections or what, is a madness. it would open up incredible space of new corruption. totally non-transparent. but again, with all these problems, in know parts of the world. becoming non fertile, dry other parts and so on. it's not even this. it's even that we have the mess in the same part. you know what was for me the truly apocalyptic scene. i was there to do a sort of that disgusting piece. why disgusting? because my stupid face is you need a perverse guide to ideology in a valley of death. but then i was shocked, you know, for me this was horrible dry, but wasn't now a couple of months ago, a mega flooding and the valley of that became a lake. we are we... it's hard. so we are will have to get to used. this is for me, i spoke about it. two days ago at princeton, the deepest, dangerous lesson that you know, when we... speak about global warming. we usually perceive it that there will be a new balance just a little bit worse. like, okay, temperature rise for , five degrees, the level of sea will raise up, but then we will have a new stability. now, what top scientists warn against is that what if there will be no new stability? what if nature will enter into what is called a true mathematical chaos? thank. simply it's in a sense unnatural nature because our spontaneous ideological notion of nature means we humans are crazy, hubris, creative. nature means reliable, repeatable patterns. what if... we lose this. and again. the only way i see is, and i cannot even imagine how, through some forms of cooperation. and when people tell me, you're utopian, i give a very simple answer, okay, i agree, maybe, even probably, but then we are lost. simple as that. islands, feudal islands will maybe survive, you know, but the world will be an undesescribable chaos. so this guy here in.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
i think we have to, do peter, what we have one more? yeah, this gentleman was waiting this whole time.
i think we have to, do peter, what we have one more? yeah, this gentleman was waiting this whole time.
Slavoj Žižek
we got to make it really
we got to make it really
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
quick though
quick though
Slavoj Žižek
let's do, i like it, sorry for obscenity, let's do an intellectual quickie. if i may put it like this.
let's do, i like it, sorry for obscenity, let's do an intellectual quickie. if i may put it like this.
Audience Member 5
thanks. so what i would say is hearing your words, it feels like you're painting this global picture of movement. that's pushing forward towards a tipping point. with talks of global movement of the environmental degradation of the world. of of all these conflicts.. my question is, you know, you talked about ukraine and russia, that conflict, that war, that invasion. and then you mentioned civil war. and my question is, do you think this tipping point will come in this century? or do you think there's a certain time that we can predict from the?
thanks. so what i would say is hearing your words, it feels like you're painting this global picture of movement. that's pushing forward towards a tipping point. with talks of global movement of the environmental degradation of the world. of of all these conflicts.. my question is, you know, you talked about ukraine and russia, that conflict, that war, that invasion. and then you mentioned civil war. and my question is, do you think this tipping point will come in this century? or do you think there's a certain time that we can predict from the?
Slavoj Žižek
beautiful question. what i'm afraid... is dead there will not be, you know, one morning we awaken, the tipping point. that it will be that, you know, it's the same, sorry to repeat this internal example of mine, how do you fall in love? you... it always comes as a shock. you can be flirting, whatever, but all of a sudden you discover that you are already in love. i will not repeat myself here. i repeat even in all my talks here at this point. but what i want to say is that what if tipping point will be like this? now we talk about, you know, i say this rhetoric. we are five minutes to 12, the last moment, and all of a sudden we will discover, sorry guys, it's five minutes past. twelve. it will never be exactly noon. i awaken some apocalyptic catastrophe and so on and so on. who knows? maybe the tipping point is... already here. y some serious people. think this, i simply i don't know enough. i even am not sure what to do. to be a radical ecologist today is very dangerous. what i reject and hate. is this idea which is extremely anthropocentric. there is mother nature out there, peaceful, homeostatic rhythm. we humans screwed it up. first, sorry to repeat, i repeat it all the time here, my old joke, you know. what mother nature? look dinosaur. our main sources of energy are oil and coal. can we even imagine what megaatarophes must have happened on our earth before humanity? times of humans to have these resources. we, our main source of energy are past catast. so thanks very much. mother nature is a dirty stupid bitch. it's not a good matter. so we you know why this is important? it's absolutely catastrophic to. relate to nature as some kind of a balanced system. we violated it, we should return to it, which means what? here i respectfully disagree with judith butler. who said that? we have to learn to discover that we are only one of the species on our earth and that we should behave more modestly. no, if we do this, everything is lost. when people say... we have to keep temperatures beneath whatever one to celsius. this means we have to act like general managers of the world, precisely to save ourselves as one among the species. so the but the tragedy is that we don't know enough to work in a safe way. for example, you know that one of the biggest... plants how do they call it? i forgot the name that we should pump into the air large amounts of co2, whatever, yeah, yeah, to protect us from the sun. but everybody knows this can be so risky. we don't know what other processes mean. so we are in a horrible situation. there is no natural balanced order to return to it. nature is full of catastrophe. there is no balance. there is no pure objective scientific knowledge tell us what to do safely. at the same time, science is all we have. we have to rely on science. so we are in deep heat. okay.
beautiful question. what i'm afraid... is dead there will not be, you know, one morning we awaken, the tipping point. that it will be that, you know, it's the same, sorry to repeat this internal example of mine, how do you fall in love? you... it always comes as a shock. you can be flirting, whatever, but all of a sudden you discover that you are already in love. i will not repeat myself here. i repeat even in all my talks here at this point. but what i want to say is that what if tipping point will be like this? now we talk about, you know, i say this rhetoric. we are five minutes to 12, the last moment, and all of a sudden we will discover, sorry guys, it's five minutes past. twelve. it will never be exactly noon. i awaken some apocalyptic catastrophe and so on and so on. who knows? maybe the tipping point is... already here. y some serious people. think this, i simply i don't know enough. i even am not sure what to do. to be a radical ecologist today is very dangerous. what i reject and hate. is this idea which is extremely anthropocentric. there is mother nature out there, peaceful, homeostatic rhythm. we humans screwed it up. first, sorry to repeat, i repeat it all the time here, my old joke, you know. what mother nature? look dinosaur. our main sources of energy are oil and coal. can we even imagine what megaatarophes must have happened on our earth before humanity? times of humans to have these resources. we, our main source of energy are past catast. so thanks very much. mother nature is a dirty stupid bitch. it's not a good matter. so we you know why this is important? it's absolutely catastrophic to. relate to nature as some kind of a balanced system. we violated it, we should return to it, which means what? here i respectfully disagree with judith butler. who said that? we have to learn to discover that we are only one of the species on our earth and that we should behave more modestly. no, if we do this, everything is lost. when people say... we have to keep temperatures beneath whatever one to celsius. this means we have to act like general managers of the world, precisely to save ourselves as one among the species. so the but the tragedy is that we don't know enough to work in a safe way. for example, you know that one of the biggest... plants how do they call it? i forgot the name that we should pump into the air large amounts of co2, whatever, yeah, yeah, to protect us from the sun. but everybody knows this can be so risky. we don't know what other processes mean. so we are in a horrible situation. there is no natural balanced order to return to it. nature is full of catastrophe. there is no balance. there is no pure objective scientific knowledge tell us what to do safely. at the same time, science is all we have. we have to rely on science. so we are in deep heat. okay.
Host (Jeremy, Hunter College)
we have to wrap up just as a... thank you.
we have to wrap up just as a... thank you.
Slavoj Žižek
i.
i.