Slavoj Zizek Explains Himself
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2021-02-06 · 1:08:34 · 8,695 words
ideologyhegel-dialecticspsychoanalysiscommunism-socialismcapitalismscience-physicssexuality-genderliberalism-political-correctnessphilosophy-generalecology-climatehistory
In this interview, Žižek responds to critics Noam Chomsky and Michael Albert, defending continental critical theory against analytic dismissals and engaging with questions of materialism, historicism, and socialist strategy. He articulates his Hegelian-materialist position, emphasizing contingency and meaninglessness over teleological necessity, while critiquing anarchist and participatory-democratic approaches for lacking a theory of historical agency. The conversation ranges across the analytic/continental divide, the status of scientific truth versus discursive construction (Latour, Foucault), gender and class as structural antagonisms (Lacan, Butler, Marx), and the ambivalent emancipatory potential of crises such as COVID-19, Trump, and the GameStop/WallStreetBets episode.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 17
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “Weltgeist (world spirit)”
Hegel's concept of the world spirit; Žižek playfully identifies Bernie Sanders sitting alone at the inauguration as its contemporary embodiment.
Žižek (via Frank Ruda) uses this to designate a materialism that does not ground itself in hard particles but in contingency, processes without transcendent meaning or purpose.
Žižek's core definition of materialism: an event is contingent not because it breaks natural law but because it carries no deeper human or divine meaning, it 'just happened.'
as “anarcho-syndicalism”
Chomsky's political self-description; Žižek uses it to note that libertarian socialism requires a spiritual transformation of humans before institutional change can work.
as “pre-representational communitarian anarchism”
Žižek's label for anarchists who idealize small self-regulating communities while ignoring the large-scale universal infrastructure (energy, science, water) those communities presuppose.
Michael Albert's elaborated post-capitalist model; Žižek criticizes it for lacking a theory of the historical force that would realize it.
as “gray on gray”
Hegel's phrase, philosophy always arrives too late, painting gray on gray, which Žižek deploys to justify his refusal to prescribe future social blueprints.
as “communist tendency”
Žižek's name for the structural demand, visible in COVID responses (UBI, universal health care, state intervention), that points beyond capitalism even when its agents disavow it.
The Hegelian method of exposing how a given order internally generates its own antagonisms and destruction, rather than measuring it against an external ideal.
as “manufacture of consent”
Chomsky/Herman's concept that the media manufactures popular consent for elite agendas; Žižek notes it but pivots to asking what trap the manipulators themselves are caught in.
Foucault's idea that each discursive practice produces its own regime of truth; Žižek invokes it only to criticize it as insufficiently universal.
Žižek's counter to radical historicism: our contemporary concepts (rape, tuberculosis) have the right to be applied retroactively to the past because they reveal something that was always structurally there.
as “discursive construction of identity”
Butler's thesis that gender/sexual identity is not biologically fixed but produced through contingent discursive acts; Žižek accepts the constructivist point but insists it is grounded in a non-contingent antagonism.
as “truth as cause”
Lacan's formulation (from 'Science et la vérité') that in psychoanalysis truth is not a positive knowledge-effect but an active cause that shapes the subject.
Implicitly operative when Žižek discusses how capitalism's class relations are 'the first true class in history', the abstract form of class struggle becomes visible only retrospectively under capitalism.
as “structural antagonism”
For Žižek, antagonism (e.g. class struggle, sexual difference) is not one historical phenomenon among others but the underlying impossibility that all social forms try and fail to resolve.
as “there is no sexual relationship”
Lacan's formula, invoked by Žižek to mean that sexual difference is not a complementary binary but an irreducible antagonism; transgender experience is difference 'at its purest.'
Stories he reaches for 2
Hegel famously saw Napoleon riding through Jena and declared he witnessed the world spirit on horseback. Žižek transposes this: Bernie Sanders alone at the inauguration is today's world spirit, the standpoint from which global antagonisms are most clearly visible.
“the world spirit was in the inauguration in the figure of Bernie Sanders — literally the world spirit, he presented the standpoint of world spirit”
Žižek cites Eliot's conservative insight that every genuinely new work of art retroactively reshapes the entire tradition, not in reality but in symbolic space. Used to argue that present concepts legitimately illuminate the past.
“every true new work of art doesn't only introduce a break with the past, but in some sense... it changes the past”
Works invoked 6
Philosophy of Right book
Hegel's work from which Žižek takes the 'gray on gray' motto; also notes Hegel saw its described social order coming to an end even as he wrote it.
Communist Manifesto book
Referenced for Marx's claim that all hitherto history is history of class struggle, and his identification of capitalism as producing the first 'true' class.
Žižek mentions his own 'big hit' from the late eighties alongside Butler's Gender Trouble, noting both authors struggle to follow up their defining works.
Gender Trouble book
Butler's mega-hit on gender as discursive construction; Žižek accepts the constructivist thesis but argues it misses the underlying antagonism that makes constructs necessary.
Albert's elaborate system for participatory economics; Žižek respects its elaborateness but criticizes it for lacking a theory of the historical force that would realize it.
Science et la vérité essay
Lacan's essay in which he distinguishes positive scientific knowledge from truth-as-cause in psychoanalysis; central to Žižek's epistemological argument in this talk.
People invoked 20
Michael Albert negative
Žižek engages Albert's Parecon as a well-elaborated but theoretically deficient plan lacking a theory of the historical agent that would realize it, and criticizing his inability to think immanent contradictions.
Nathan Robinson negative
Grouped with Chomsky and Albert as someone in the analytic/empiricist radical tradition who dismisses Žižek's continental work.
Robert Brandom positive
Cited as exemplary case of analytic philosopher seriously engaging Hegel, evidence that the analytic/continental divide is misleading.
Jacques Lacan positive
Used throughout for truth as cause vs. truth effect, the jealousy example, 'there is no sexual relationship', and the separation of knowledge from subjective truth.
Frank Ruda positive
Žižek's 'good friend' and German colleague, credited with coining the phrase 'materialism without matter.'
Richard Rorty positive
Cited alongside Brandom as bridging analytic and continental traditions through a positive approach to Hegel, albeit as a cultural historicist reading.
Judith Butler negative
Žižek partly accepts her constructivism but argues it lacks an account of the structural antagonism underlying gender constructs; her notion of 'fundamentalism' is itself mediated by contemporary experience.
Donald Trump positive
Žižek did not support Trump but treats him as dialectically useful, an explosion of hegemonic consensus revealing systemic contradictions; also compared to fascism as a reaction to the communist threat.
Mikhail Bakunin negative
Used as the historical foil: preached anarchism while practicing centralized authoritarian organization, illustrating the contradiction at the heart of anarchism.
Bruno Latour negative
Žižek appreciates Latour's line that the pandemic is a dress rehearsal for climate catastrophe, but sharply criticizes his radical social constructivism (tuberculosis example) as secretly presupposing a non-historical viewpoint.
Bernie Sanders positive
Identified as the contemporary embodiment of the Hegelian world spirit, representing the standpoint from which global antagonisms are visible; his marginalization yet public legitimacy signals a new political common sense.
T. S. Eliot positive
Described as an 'intelligent conservative' Žižek loves; cited for the idea that new art retroactively changes the past in symbolic space.
Michel Foucault negative
Calls Foucault his 'enemy under quotation marks'; criticizes 'truth effect' as relativizing science; argues Foucault's late works on antiquity are themselves mediated by modernity, undermining his own historicism.
Mentioned alongside Bakunin as representing the anarchist side of the First International split, with Chomsky implicitly placed in this lineage.
Walter Benjamin positive
Cited approvingly for the thesis that fascism was a reaction to the threat of social revolution.
Rosa Luxemburg positive
Mentioned as part of the left-Marxist tradition (alongside anarcho-syndicalists) that always emphasized spiritual transformation as essential to emancipation.
Noam Chomsky negative
Žižek criticizes Chomsky's 'manufacturing consent' framework as too focused on exposing elite lying rather than the self-deception of power; classifies him as anarcho-syndicalist, not Marxist; partly agrees on materialism; finds his positive political vision unclear.
Karl Marx positive
Žižek identifies as Marxist in a non-classical sense; praises Marx's insight that working class is the historical agent and his critique of Bakunin; notes Marx saw capitalism produces the first 'true' class in history.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Central positive reference throughout; Žižek identifies as Hegelian, uses Hegel's immanent critique, his prohibition on future blueprints, and his Philosophy of Right as methodological anchors.
Max Weber positive
Cited for demonstrating that 'profession' as free individual choice is a specifically modern category, not applicable to pre-modern societies.
What it argues
analytic vs. continental philosophy and mutual dismissalmaterialism as meaninglessness and contingencyHegelian immanent critique vs. utopian blueprintstruth as cause vs. truth as discursive effecthistorical agency and the missing revolutionary subjectcrisis as emancipatory catalyst (COVID, Trump, WallStreetBets)structural antagonism versus liberal pluralism
Dialectical moves 8
“Anarchism and authoritarian oppressive social space are not opposed — if there ever was an anarchic system, it's capitalism insofar as it remains liberal.”
The apparent opposite of anarchism (authoritarian order) is secretly its product; liberal capitalism is the real anarchism, governed only by the invisible hand.
“Far from fascism being simply the opposite of communism, fascism was a reaction to the threat of social revolution — as Walter Benjamin saw.”
Fascism is not communism's negation but its perverted double, it can only be understood against the backdrop of the communist threat it responds to.
“Those in power in order to manipulate us also have to manipulate themselves — what interests me is not that they lie but in what trap they themselves are caught.”
The ruling-class cynic is not a free subject who deceives others; the deceiver is themselves deceived, captured by ideology.
“Even if my jealous accusation is true — she really is cheating — my jealousy is still a lie, because it is my way of coping with my basic sexual identity.”
Factual accuracy and subjective truth diverge: a claim can be factually correct and ideologically false simultaneously.
“Our notion of the past is always a historical product of our present — Latour himself presupposes a position outside history from which to compare past and present.”
The radical historicist who relativizes present concepts against the past secretly occupies a non-historical God's-eye view, which is self-refuting.
“Transgender people are not beyond sexual difference — they are difference at its purest, where antagonism breaks out.”
What appears to transcend the binary of sexual difference in fact intensifies that antagonism, confirming rather than dissolving it.
“I'm at the same time more historicist — and in this way I try to overcome historicism.”
True historicism, taken to its limit, undermines itself: if the past is always mediated by the present, then the historicist position that tries to be neutral toward both is itself historically conditioned.
“Trump would have been better — not that I supported him, but Trump brought to explosion the immanent antagonisms of the existing order.”
The worst candidate is dialectically productive: what looks like catastrophic regression can be the force that shatters hegemonic consensus and opens space for transformation.
Claims 20
asserts
Materialism is not about hard particles but about accepting the basic meaninglessness and contingency of events — COVID is pure materialism.materialism
rejects
Even most traditional Marxists and Stalinists are secretly not materialists because they presuppose a deeper necessity of historical progress and treat nature as disposable for human ends.Stalinist/orthodox-Marxist materialism
asserts
Chomsky should be classified as an anarcho-syndicalist, not a Marxist or even a socialist, and his positive political vision remains unclear.Chomsky's political position
asserts
Anarchism and authoritarian social structures are not opposites — capitalism itself is the anarchic system par excellence, governed by the invisible hand.anarchism vs. authority
asserts
As a Hegelian, he does not propose a blueprint for future society but rather exposes how existing orders immanently destroy themselves.Hegelian method and socialist strategy
asserts
Trump was not to be supported but represented a useful explosion of the hegemonic consensus, part of the same historical process as Bernie Sanders.Trump's historical significance
asserts
COVID revealed a communist tendency — demands for UBI, universal health care, and international solidarity — even while the system appropriated and distorted those demands.COVID-19 and emancipatory politics
asserts
Fascism cannot be understood without communism — fascism was a reaction to the threat of social revolution, just as Trumpism reacts to systemic contradictions.fascism and communism
rejects
Foucault's 'truth effect' — the idea that each discourse has its own truth regime — is too radically historicist and relativizes modern science unjustifiably.Foucault's relativist epistemology
asserts
Modern science, especially quantum physics, touches the Real in a harder way than common sense, and its productivity (atomic bombs, quantum computers) proves it is not merely another discursive truth effect.scientific realism vs. discursive constructivism
rejects
Latour's historicist argument — that tuberculosis did not exist for ancient Egyptians because the category was not yet constructed — is absurd because it ignores that our image of the past is always mediated by the present.Latour's radical social constructivism
asserts
We have the right to apply our contemporary concepts retroactively to the past — what today counts as rape probably occurred constantly in earlier centuries — not because we know the past better but because the present shapes how we constitute the past.historical retroactivity of ethical concepts
asserts
Jealousy can be pathological (a lie) even when the factual accusation is true — truth is not reducible to factual accuracy.truth vs. factual knowledge
asserts
Anti-Semitism cannot be refuted on the level of facts — a book could contain only true facts about Jewish presence in German professional life and still be a lie at the level of subjective truth.ideology and the limits of fact-checking
asserts
Capitalism is the first social formation that makes class structure visible in its abstract universality — before it, classes were masked as estates.Marxist theory of class
reframes
Butler's gender constructivism is correct but incomplete — positive gender identities are constructs through which subjects try to domesticate an underlying irreducible sexual antagonism.Judith Butler's gender theory
asserts
Transgender people are not 'beyond difference' but are difference (sexual antagonism) at its purest.transgender identity and sexual difference
asserts
WallStreetBets/GameStop symptomatically exposed the immanent limitation of the financial system — not by threatening to destroy it but by revealing that popular capitalism for all is structurally impossible.WallStreetBets and capitalist ideology
asserts
What interests him in ideology is not that rulers cynically lie but in what trap they themselves are caught — rulers must manipulate themselves to manipulate others.ideology and self-deception of the ruling class
rejects
The analytic/continental divide is misleading — serious analytic philosophers like Brandom and Rorty have long been working with Hegel.analytic vs. continental philosophy
Quotes 14
“This is for me materialism. Not so much contingency as meaninglessness. To accept the basic meaninglessness of it.”Slavoj Žižek · materialism as acceptance of meaninglessness
“Philosophy always comes too late, it just paints gray on gray.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel on the limits of philosophy
“I am a pessimist here... I just look at what is proposed by partisans of this or that and try to guess in advance how things in some immanent sense necessarily will go wrong.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegelian pessimism as method
“Hegel would have really felt like a fish in a fresh water analyzing all these reversals.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel vindicated by 20th-century reversals
“Those in power in order to manipulate us also have to manipulate themselves. What interests me is not that they lie — what interests me is in what trap they themselves are caught.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology as self-entrapment of the powerful
“Even if my accusation are true — she really is doing it — my jealousy is still a lie because my jealousy is my way of coping with my basic sexual identity.”Slavoj Žižek · truth vs. factual accuracy (Lacanian example)
“You cannot find anti-Semitism on the level of facts.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology cannot be refuted empirically
“Fascism was a reaction, as Walter Benjamin saw it nicely, to the threat of social revolution.”Slavoj Žižek · fascism as reactionary response to communism
“I believe in eternity of ideas here. We have the right to apply it to the — to the past.”Slavoj Žižek · retroactive universality of ethical concepts
“For Lacan truth is not an effect but... truth is a cause in psychoanalysis.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacanian truth as cause not effect
“Transgender people are not beyond difference, they're difference at its purest. Antagonism breaks out.”Slavoj Žižek · transgender as purest expression of sexual antagonism
“It's nice but it's structurally impossible — and it points toward a limitation of the system.”Slavoj Žižek · popular capitalism is structurally impossible (WallStreetBets)
“Even if you are alone voice you have to tell the truth. In the long term it works, I think.”Slavoj Žižek · intellectual commitment to truth despite marginalization
“I try to describe their own trap as it were. How those who manipulate are manipulating themselves also.”Slavoj Žižek · critique of ideology as exposing the rulers' self-entrapment
Transcript 68 turns
Slavoj Žižek
I
I
unknown
invited you back because I recently interviewed Michael Albert, an American political critic, the publisher of South End Press and one of the founders of Z Magazine, which for me was, set the limit for the American left thought when I was getting out of high school and in college in the nineties. He is also a good friend of Noam Chomsky, his former publisher, and Chomsky, as you know, has been publicly dismissive of you and your work. So anyhow, during our conversation with Michael Albert, my conversation with Michael Albert, I told him that not only did I consider myself to be some sort of Marxist, but even worse, I was kind of a fan of your work. And while Michael was very kind to me about my errors, he was also dismissive of your work in a way that I didn't think was fair. So I invited you and I invited him onto this channel to talk about critical theory and to make an effort to kind of explain what issues you could cover and what you could contribute to the struggle for socialism. But unfortunately, he turned down the invitation despite the fact that I made several efforts to explain what we would be discussing. He felt that he didn't understand it well enough to contribute. So as we do talk to each other, I kind of am going to keep Michael and Noam Chomsky in the back of my mind, and in a way this whole interview is aimed at both of them to try to communicate to them what issues are at stake in your work and what it is they're overlooking as they kind of fail to take in and understand
invited you back because I recently interviewed Michael Albert, an American political critic, the publisher of South End Press and one of the founders of Z Magazine, which for me was, set the limit for the American left thought when I was getting out of high school and in college in the nineties. He is also a good friend of Noam Chomsky, his former publisher, and Chomsky, as you know, has been publicly dismissive of you and your work. So anyhow, during our conversation with Michael Albert, my conversation with Michael Albert, I told him that not only did I consider myself to be some sort of Marxist, but even worse, I was kind of a fan of your work. And while Michael was very kind to me about my errors, he was also dismissive of your work in a way that I didn't think was fair. So I invited you and I invited him onto this channel to talk about critical theory and to make an effort to kind of explain what issues you could cover and what you could contribute to the struggle for socialism. But unfortunately, he turned down the invitation despite the fact that I made several efforts to explain what we would be discussing. He felt that he didn't understand it well enough to contribute. So as we do talk to each other, I kind of am going to keep Michael and Noam Chomsky in the back of my mind, and in a way this whole interview is aimed at both of them to try to communicate to them what issues are at stake in your work and what it is they're overlooking as they kind of fail to take in and understand
Slavoj Žižek
your perspective. For my standpoint, it’s sad that they cannot reply, no?
your perspective. For my standpoint, it’s sad that they cannot reply, no?
unknown
But well I mean, perhaps after this we could do this again in a few months or a year or whatever and they will reply, or maybe I could get Chomsky himself to come on and talk to you. That would be— Yeah,
But well I mean, perhaps after this we could do this again in a few months or a year or whatever and they will reply, or maybe I could get Chomsky himself to come on and talk to you. That would be— Yeah,
Slavoj Žižek
it’s when, when—I know, it’s like—it’s evil but not against anybody, just an idea. Yeah, this will happen when Donald Trump will join AOC and the left-wing Democrats.
it’s when, when—I know, it’s like—it’s evil but not against anybody, just an idea. Yeah, this will happen when Donald Trump will join AOC and the left-wing Democrats.
unknown
Okay, so I wanted to start by just reading you the question that I would have posed to Michael if he had shown up. And here it is: Noam Chomsky has criticized Žižek for spouting nonsense and/or truisms. Sorry,
Okay, so I wanted to start by just reading you the question that I would have posed to Michael if he had shown up. And here it is: Noam Chomsky has criticized Žižek for spouting nonsense and/or truisms. Sorry,
Slavoj Žižek
I cannot abstain from giving you an—I will give you an answer as if I am myself. I will pretend to be myself,
I cannot abstain from giving you an—I will give you an answer as if I am myself. I will pretend to be myself,
unknown
okay. Well, that's good because I'm pretending to be me right now. So, Noam Chomsky has criticized Žižek for spouting nonsense and/or truisms. Given that Chomsky himself has said that we do not have a theory of the physical, and that he claims that the word "real" is merely an honorific term, and that he also claims that his politics are based on truisms and/or common sense—which is a category that he abandons when he's doing his real work wherein he tries to figure out how the world works—do you think it's fair to charge people in the continental tradition, people like Žižek, with playing games with words or trying to obscure what would otherwise be seen as nonsense or empty concepts and/or mere truisms? And that was my question for Albert. Here's my question for you: what do you think is the nature of the gap or the block that keeps Chomsky and Albert and others like him in that tradition—maybe we’d throw in Nathan Robinson—from understanding you and your arguments and assertions?
okay. Well, that's good because I'm pretending to be me right now. So, Noam Chomsky has criticized Žižek for spouting nonsense and/or truisms. Given that Chomsky himself has said that we do not have a theory of the physical, and that he claims that the word "real" is merely an honorific term, and that he also claims that his politics are based on truisms and/or common sense—which is a category that he abandons when he's doing his real work wherein he tries to figure out how the world works—do you think it's fair to charge people in the continental tradition, people like Žižek, with playing games with words or trying to obscure what would otherwise be seen as nonsense or empty concepts and/or mere truisms? And that was my question for Albert. Here's my question for you: what do you think is the nature of the gap or the block that keeps Chomsky and Albert and others like him in that tradition—maybe we’d throw in Nathan Robinson—from understanding you and your arguments and assertions?
Slavoj Žižek
No, I have just a couple of points, I will improvise a little bit around this. I think that this idea that it’s simply analytic tradition against so-called continental tradition is maybe a little bit misleading because, you know, as we all know, the interesting things that go on already for decades in so-called analytic tradition is very serious attempts to combine it with so-called continental tradition. Now we have a whole series of philosophers—exemplary case would have been Robert Brandom, who try to read Hegel from a standpoint which is, if not analytic, at least deeply indebted to analytic, analytic thoughts. Then we have all the others who are—I will not now bore you with names—who are trying to do exactly this like Richard Rorty—okay, he was never a pure analytic philosopher, but nonetheless he ended up with a positive approach to Hegel. Okay, it’s a specific reading, Hegel as a cultural historicist and so on. I just find it strange that precisely when the trend of the world spirit, however you put it, you know—and I must repeat, maybe you know it, a note which I find very nice from my last texts, I think I published it in Philosophical Salon or where, you know this Hegel’s famous remark, when in I think, he saw Napoleon riding through Jena after the battle of Jena where Napoleon defeated Prussian army and so on others. Hegel was so fascinated he said, it’s as if I see Weltgeist, the world spirit, riding on a horse triumphantly. The point is that world spirit was, was in the inauguration in the figure of Bernie Sanders, you know. You know that famous photo, he there alone sitting and so on, the world spirit was there at a distance. Literally the world spirit. He was the standpoint of how—he presented the standpoint literally of world spirit. By this I mean if you analyze global situation, how should we look upon the inauguration, not with the usual liberal relief and so on and so on. So let me go back to your questions. I isolated a couple of points there. Let me go systematically through them. I think they are important. First, this may surprise you or whomever. I think you drew my attention to it, but to that part, I didn't know it, I admit, it’s from an interview a couple of years old or of Chomsky and materialism. You know how matter, he says, philosophically very correctly, that already with Newton, the father of—okay with Galileo who was earlier—the father of modern physics and so on, already with Newton, yes, there is matter but there is energy whose status is not clear. Like matter in a way disappeared, you cannot specify it. First thing I would say here is that this certainly is not a common-sensical view, you know. This is an extreme paradoxical view that every Hegelian partisan of European idealism would love. You know, this is certainly not common sense. And this is how I understand materialism. My answer to that reproach is that how matter is elusive and so on, now I’m speaking, I try to be simple as simple as possible, but I mean it seriously, it’s that we have to leave behind this traditional notion of matter which is, to simplify it to the utmost, empty space in which some little particles are jumping around, you know, little pieces of matter. It’s not that. I take the lesson of relativity theory, quantum physics and so on and so on. I like all this although I’m afraid I don’t understand them in their all their immanent scientific dimensions. But this idea that if we look for matter in this small pieces there are really out there jumping around, it’s not that. I accept all these paradoxes that matter can be dissolved into pure oscillations or variations into a, into a curved space or whatever. Even my good friend, German colleague of mine Frank Ruda, coined I think the term "materialism without matter," you know. What matters is not that you find some pieces of hard stuff which are really there. What is the basic thing is that a process is contingent. Not in the sense that it doesn’t obey necessities, but contingent in the sense that there is no deep reason or cause or spiritual motive or goal controlling it. In this sense contingent. What do I mean by this? To explain it again, I’m sorry if I go too much into naive philosophy. Let’s say that a comet hits the Earth and destroys life. Of course it will not be a contingent element in the sense of, oh this violated the laws of nature. No, if we saw this, if we will see in advance this comet or whatever, we will be able to predict probably up to a second when it will hit the Earth and so on. But it’s contingent in the sense that from our human standpoint it’s totally meaningless, it just happened. This is for me materialism. Because new agers and theological idealists would immediately try to read meaning into it. Is it a sign of divine wrath, did we exploit nature too much, nature is taking revenge and so on and so on. Which is why for me the pandemic now, Covid, is pure materialism. Because again, of course we should analyze it, how it was also conditioned with other not non-physical, not just biological or chemical, social processes. It's clear that without our economic global communication and so on, Covid would be a phenomenon limited to some small province in China, probably in China or whatever. But why I am saying that only this is for me materialism? This—not so much contingency as meaninglessness. To accept the basic meaninglessness of it. In this sense I think that although not explicitly, but implicitly even most of the traditional Marxists, especially Stalinists, are not really materialists. Although they wouldn't never say it, their silent presupposition is that there is a kind of deeper necessity of progress in history and again, although they wouldn't say it, they implicitly claim that nature is here to serve us, basically. Nature is matter out there being disposable to us, it’s basically out there so that we—it offers itself for us to manipulate it, exploit it and so on and so on. Again, this is for me the notion of materialism. So here I would half agree with what Chomsky writes in some texts, I forgot where. I would just say that no, this is not my notion of materialism. Sorry, just I will finish immediately. Then the second point that you mentioned is about—is about—socialism and all that, you know. But I don't think that Chomsky would even have agreed to designate himself as a socialist. Isn't he more a kind of anarchic democrat, if I may put it like this? Does he say anywhere, maybe I haven't read him enough. I know, and he is up to a point right, but I don't think it's as simple as he Chomsky claims, I know that he is very critical of Bolsheviks and of October Revolution. I think at a deeper level, again I’m not criticizing him here, I don't think he would define himself as a Marxist, even. No, he would not. This is not a critical point, and that's the enigma I have with him. Where does he stand, Chomsky, positively in politics? He’s an anarcho-syndicalist. How far does the success of libertarian socialism or anarchism as a way of life really depend on a fundamental change in the nature of man, both in his motivation, his altruism, and also in his knowledge and sophistication? I think it not only depends on it, but in fact the whole purpose of libertarian socialism is that it will contribute to it. It will contribute to a spiritual transformation. Precisely that kind of great transformation in, in the way humans conceive of themselves and their ability to act, to decide, to create, to produce, to inquire. Precisely that spiritual transformation that social thinkers from the left Marxist tradition, from Luxemburg say on over through anarcho-syndicalists have always emphasized. So on the one hand, it requires that spiritual transformation, on the other hand the its purpose is to create institutions which will contribute to that transformation. Well, he would fit into the First International, before the split. Oh, she? Yeah, I think Marx and Bakunin. He would be on the Bakunin, Proudhon side of the First International, I think, and I think he would be an anarchist in theory, I mean in practice—yeah but with all my criticism of Marx, you know what’s my other problem here? Marx saw
No, I have just a couple of points, I will improvise a little bit around this. I think that this idea that it’s simply analytic tradition against so-called continental tradition is maybe a little bit misleading because, you know, as we all know, the interesting things that go on already for decades in so-called analytic tradition is very serious attempts to combine it with so-called continental tradition. Now we have a whole series of philosophers—exemplary case would have been Robert Brandom, who try to read Hegel from a standpoint which is, if not analytic, at least deeply indebted to analytic, analytic thoughts. Then we have all the others who are—I will not now bore you with names—who are trying to do exactly this like Richard Rorty—okay, he was never a pure analytic philosopher, but nonetheless he ended up with a positive approach to Hegel. Okay, it’s a specific reading, Hegel as a cultural historicist and so on. I just find it strange that precisely when the trend of the world spirit, however you put it, you know—and I must repeat, maybe you know it, a note which I find very nice from my last texts, I think I published it in Philosophical Salon or where, you know this Hegel’s famous remark, when in I think, he saw Napoleon riding through Jena after the battle of Jena where Napoleon defeated Prussian army and so on others. Hegel was so fascinated he said, it’s as if I see Weltgeist, the world spirit, riding on a horse triumphantly. The point is that world spirit was, was in the inauguration in the figure of Bernie Sanders, you know. You know that famous photo, he there alone sitting and so on, the world spirit was there at a distance. Literally the world spirit. He was the standpoint of how—he presented the standpoint literally of world spirit. By this I mean if you analyze global situation, how should we look upon the inauguration, not with the usual liberal relief and so on and so on. So let me go back to your questions. I isolated a couple of points there. Let me go systematically through them. I think they are important. First, this may surprise you or whomever. I think you drew my attention to it, but to that part, I didn't know it, I admit, it’s from an interview a couple of years old or of Chomsky and materialism. You know how matter, he says, philosophically very correctly, that already with Newton, the father of—okay with Galileo who was earlier—the father of modern physics and so on, already with Newton, yes, there is matter but there is energy whose status is not clear. Like matter in a way disappeared, you cannot specify it. First thing I would say here is that this certainly is not a common-sensical view, you know. This is an extreme paradoxical view that every Hegelian partisan of European idealism would love. You know, this is certainly not common sense. And this is how I understand materialism. My answer to that reproach is that how matter is elusive and so on, now I’m speaking, I try to be simple as simple as possible, but I mean it seriously, it’s that we have to leave behind this traditional notion of matter which is, to simplify it to the utmost, empty space in which some little particles are jumping around, you know, little pieces of matter. It’s not that. I take the lesson of relativity theory, quantum physics and so on and so on. I like all this although I’m afraid I don’t understand them in their all their immanent scientific dimensions. But this idea that if we look for matter in this small pieces there are really out there jumping around, it’s not that. I accept all these paradoxes that matter can be dissolved into pure oscillations or variations into a, into a curved space or whatever. Even my good friend, German colleague of mine Frank Ruda, coined I think the term "materialism without matter," you know. What matters is not that you find some pieces of hard stuff which are really there. What is the basic thing is that a process is contingent. Not in the sense that it doesn’t obey necessities, but contingent in the sense that there is no deep reason or cause or spiritual motive or goal controlling it. In this sense contingent. What do I mean by this? To explain it again, I’m sorry if I go too much into naive philosophy. Let’s say that a comet hits the Earth and destroys life. Of course it will not be a contingent element in the sense of, oh this violated the laws of nature. No, if we saw this, if we will see in advance this comet or whatever, we will be able to predict probably up to a second when it will hit the Earth and so on. But it’s contingent in the sense that from our human standpoint it’s totally meaningless, it just happened. This is for me materialism. Because new agers and theological idealists would immediately try to read meaning into it. Is it a sign of divine wrath, did we exploit nature too much, nature is taking revenge and so on and so on. Which is why for me the pandemic now, Covid, is pure materialism. Because again, of course we should analyze it, how it was also conditioned with other not non-physical, not just biological or chemical, social processes. It's clear that without our economic global communication and so on, Covid would be a phenomenon limited to some small province in China, probably in China or whatever. But why I am saying that only this is for me materialism? This—not so much contingency as meaninglessness. To accept the basic meaninglessness of it. In this sense I think that although not explicitly, but implicitly even most of the traditional Marxists, especially Stalinists, are not really materialists. Although they wouldn't never say it, their silent presupposition is that there is a kind of deeper necessity of progress in history and again, although they wouldn't say it, they implicitly claim that nature is here to serve us, basically. Nature is matter out there being disposable to us, it’s basically out there so that we—it offers itself for us to manipulate it, exploit it and so on and so on. Again, this is for me the notion of materialism. So here I would half agree with what Chomsky writes in some texts, I forgot where. I would just say that no, this is not my notion of materialism. Sorry, just I will finish immediately. Then the second point that you mentioned is about—is about—socialism and all that, you know. But I don't think that Chomsky would even have agreed to designate himself as a socialist. Isn't he more a kind of anarchic democrat, if I may put it like this? Does he say anywhere, maybe I haven't read him enough. I know, and he is up to a point right, but I don't think it's as simple as he Chomsky claims, I know that he is very critical of Bolsheviks and of October Revolution. I think at a deeper level, again I’m not criticizing him here, I don't think he would define himself as a Marxist, even. No, he would not. This is not a critical point, and that's the enigma I have with him. Where does he stand, Chomsky, positively in politics? He’s an anarcho-syndicalist. How far does the success of libertarian socialism or anarchism as a way of life really depend on a fundamental change in the nature of man, both in his motivation, his altruism, and also in his knowledge and sophistication? I think it not only depends on it, but in fact the whole purpose of libertarian socialism is that it will contribute to it. It will contribute to a spiritual transformation. Precisely that kind of great transformation in, in the way humans conceive of themselves and their ability to act, to decide, to create, to produce, to inquire. Precisely that spiritual transformation that social thinkers from the left Marxist tradition, from Luxemburg say on over through anarcho-syndicalists have always emphasized. So on the one hand, it requires that spiritual transformation, on the other hand the its purpose is to create institutions which will contribute to that transformation. Well, he would fit into the First International, before the split. Oh, she? Yeah, I think Marx and Bakunin. He would be on the Bakunin, Proudhon side of the First International, I think, and I think he would be an anarchist in theory, I mean in practice—yeah but with all my criticism of Marx, you know what’s my other problem here? Marx saw
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something
something
Slavoj Žižek
very clearly and intelligently. His Marxist reproach to Bakunin is not just that he is an anarchist, but that he is preaching anarchism while in organizational matter he was very centralized and authoritarian even, you know. That anarchists God save you when anarchists take power, you know what they are ready to do in a very authoritarian way. The second—this is I think Marxist basic view that anarchy and authority—and I’m not saying now Chomsky or whoever don't see it—that anarchy and authoritarian or oppressive social
very clearly and intelligently. His Marxist reproach to Bakunin is not just that he is an anarchist, but that he is preaching anarchism while in organizational matter he was very centralized and authoritarian even, you know. That anarchists God save you when anarchists take power, you know what they are ready to do in a very authoritarian way. The second—this is I think Marxist basic view that anarchy and authority—and I’m not saying now Chomsky or whoever don't see it—that anarchy and authoritarian or oppressive social
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space are not opposed. Look, if
space are not opposed. Look, if
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there ever was an anarchic system, it’s capitalism insofar as it remains liberal. You say let's leave it to the market, through chaos there is an invisible hand which somehow controls the chaos and a good result will emerge. But isn’t
there ever was an anarchic system, it’s capitalism insofar as it remains liberal. You say let's leave it to the market, through chaos there is an invisible hand which somehow controls the chaos and a good result will emerge. But isn’t
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like, isn’t nonetheless in this sense the silent presupposition of every anarchism I think at least a certain order which has to be here so that your anarchism can thrive. So for example, it’s a very primitive point, now I’m common sense, you know, but I always when I debate with anarchists, I always ask them: okay, today the world is one, we have ecological problem, energy, education, science—don’t you need some kind of a universal not so much authority as public order which must be well regulated so that you can thrive in your anarchy? I always also reproach those anarchists, I would call them pre-representational communitarian anarchists, who see the ideal in these small self-regulating communities,
like, isn’t nonetheless in this sense the silent presupposition of every anarchism I think at least a certain order which has to be here so that your anarchism can thrive. So for example, it’s a very primitive point, now I’m common sense, you know, but I always when I debate with anarchists, I always ask them: okay, today the world is one, we have ecological problem, energy, education, science—don’t you need some kind of a universal not so much authority as public order which must be well regulated so that you can thrive in your anarchy? I always also reproach those anarchists, I would call them pre-representational communitarian anarchists, who see the ideal in these small self-regulating communities,
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you know, pre-representative democracy. People come together, debate
you know, pre-representative democracy. People come together, debate
Slavoj Žižek
in that small community all the points, how to organize
in that small community all the points, how to organize
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education, health and so on and so on. But again I’m saying, so many things have to be there: probably electricity
education, health and so on and so on. But again I’m saying, so many things have to be there: probably electricity
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supply, science and so on, water—like every of these small anarchic communities presuppose a well-shaped
supply, science and so on, water—like every of these small anarchic communities presuppose a well-shaped
Slavoj Žižek
universal place, and that’s what really interests me. Michael Albert, who's Chomsky's friend, who might have been here, is the author of a book called Parecon, or on participatory economics, and he has worked out a fairly elaborate system of what it would take to replace capitalism through democratic participation. And—he would have an answer, yes? Yeah, he could have answered that question, and what you’re asking I think can be like taken to another level where you start to ask, okay, what is your theory of money because he would keep money in his participatory economic system. What about, what is the basis of class? Is it really about prestige or decision making or does it have to do with what Marx would call exploitation, and so on. So one of the difficulties I had when I interviewed him was getting my perspective, which was a Marxist perspective, into terms that he could take on without basically feeling like he had an allergic reaction. Here again, I would try to change the terrain because my Hegelian whatever you call it critical point is—I must emphasize this—my Hegelian critical point is not that I have my own vision of future and so on. I, I—what I see Hegel as is the philosopher whose motto is, as we all know from the preface to philosophy, his Philosophy of Right: philosophy always comes too late, it just paints gray on gray, you know, I endlessly repeat all this stuff. So as a Hegelian, I am not proposing a new structure of future society. I think that where is Hegel at his best? When he describes a certain order, social order, philosophical order, whatever, ethical order, and brings out how immanently it destroys itself, how its inner antagonisms explode and so on and so on. And Hegel saw this coming even for his own system. He saw very well, you know, it’s interesting to look into this, the last Hegel’s published text as you probably know is his quite violent strange reaction to so-called English Reform Bill—well I don’t know—where they expanded a little bit voting, electoral voting, bringing it almost, not quite of course, to universal vote. And Hegel was for corporate voting, you participate in state affairs not immediately as a single citizen but only through corporation, estate and so on, and for him this was horror. I don't think his criticism should be taken for us today because democracy in some sense, whatever it meant, did work. But what I’m saying is that Hegel saw his world that he describes in his Philosophy of Right coming to an end. And Hegel strictly prohibited any visions of the future. So me as a Hegelian, far from advocating some new communism and having a formula of it, I’m a pessimist
universal place, and that’s what really interests me. Michael Albert, who's Chomsky's friend, who might have been here, is the author of a book called Parecon, or on participatory economics, and he has worked out a fairly elaborate system of what it would take to replace capitalism through democratic participation. And—he would have an answer, yes? Yeah, he could have answered that question, and what you’re asking I think can be like taken to another level where you start to ask, okay, what is your theory of money because he would keep money in his participatory economic system. What about, what is the basis of class? Is it really about prestige or decision making or does it have to do with what Marx would call exploitation, and so on. So one of the difficulties I had when I interviewed him was getting my perspective, which was a Marxist perspective, into terms that he could take on without basically feeling like he had an allergic reaction. Here again, I would try to change the terrain because my Hegelian whatever you call it critical point is—I must emphasize this—my Hegelian critical point is not that I have my own vision of future and so on. I, I—what I see Hegel as is the philosopher whose motto is, as we all know from the preface to philosophy, his Philosophy of Right: philosophy always comes too late, it just paints gray on gray, you know, I endlessly repeat all this stuff. So as a Hegelian, I am not proposing a new structure of future society. I think that where is Hegel at his best? When he describes a certain order, social order, philosophical order, whatever, ethical order, and brings out how immanently it destroys itself, how its inner antagonisms explode and so on and so on. And Hegel saw this coming even for his own system. He saw very well, you know, it’s interesting to look into this, the last Hegel’s published text as you probably know is his quite violent strange reaction to so-called English Reform Bill—well I don’t know—where they expanded a little bit voting, electoral voting, bringing it almost, not quite of course, to universal vote. And Hegel was for corporate voting, you participate in state affairs not immediately as a single citizen but only through corporation, estate and so on, and for him this was horror. I don't think his criticism should be taken for us today because democracy in some sense, whatever it meant, did work. But what I’m saying is that Hegel saw his world that he describes in his Philosophy of Right coming to an end. And Hegel strictly prohibited any visions of the future. So me as a Hegelian, far from advocating some new communism and having a formula of it, I’m a pessimist
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here. And maybe I’m not so far from Chomsky here because also I see this in him. I just look at what is proposed by partisans of this or that and try to guess in advance how things in some immanent sense necessarily will go wrong. So I think Hegel would have—would have felt, how do you say stupid proverb, like fish in a water with twentieth-century history. You know
here. And maybe I’m not so far from Chomsky here because also I see this in him. I just look at what is proposed by partisans of this or that and try to guess in advance how things in some immanent sense necessarily will go wrong. So I think Hegel would have—would have felt, how do you say stupid proverb, like fish in a water with twentieth-century history. You know
Slavoj Žižek
it’s all Hegelian. You have this big progress of
it’s all Hegelian. You have this big progress of
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peace in the—for us Europeans, not elsewhere, colonization was very brutal—in Western Europe and
peace in the—for us Europeans, not elsewhere, colonization was very brutal—in Western Europe and
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United States. Where does it culminate? In the Great War, First World War, a nightmare. You know, you have October Revolution, an explosive emancipatory event. Where does it end up? In Stalinism and so on and so on. Hegel would have really felt like a fish in a fresh water analyzing all these reversals. This for me doesn't mean that we should do nothing, just sit down and be pessimist. But I advocate as a Hegelian this
United States. Where does it culminate? In the Great War, First World War, a nightmare. You know, you have October Revolution, an explosive emancipatory event. Where does it end up? In Stalinism and so on and so on. Hegel would have really felt like a fish in a fresh water analyzing all these reversals. This for me doesn't mean that we should do nothing, just sit down and be pessimist. But I advocate as a Hegelian this
Slavoj Žižek
unpredictability and openness. You always have to take into account that what you plan to do will go terribly wrong. Revolutions have to fail and so on and so on. And I’m more and more approaching this, and that would be my—I don't know the details, I’ll admit it—the critique of the book on participatory democracy, you know. Because I take another Hegelian point here: how does he imagine that this will happen? First, I don't like people who make plans. Plans are excellent, but at one level I hope we both—but which force will realize them? Marx had serious limitations, but he saw this correctly and I think in a too idealist way, Marx saw the agent in reality, working class, which will push towards this realization. Things went wrong. But today that's why I—I will say now something horrible which horrified Chomsky and so on—that's why I not supported Trump but said that Trump would have been better, you know. I want people who make appear, who brought to explosion the immanent antagonisms of the existing order. Maybe in a too naive way, I saw Trump as somebody who nonetheless ruined the—ruined the hegemonic consensus before him. Something new happened. It was horrible, I know. But I claim in this sense Trump is part of the same process as on the other extreme—but extremist for me not a bad term—Bernie Sanders and so on and so on. It is very important not to be afraid of this. Second thing, maybe it was too naive my reading of Covid as giving us a chance. But isn’t it clear and it’s becoming more and more clear that Covid, although these demands are already neglected, turned into their opposite, but that Covid for the first time through Covid, that’s what fascinates me in the pandemic, things that were—if you or me were to say them a year and a half ago, we would have been laughed off. Haha, you are utopian socialist, you wanted communism in the United States. But let's see what even Trump had to do: elements—I know how he cheated—elements of universal basic income, elements of direct socialization in the sense, okay, of state intervention into economy, elements of—not so much Trump but others—some kind of egalitarian solidarity and so on. I think that Covid brought out some kind of tendency which I risk to name communist. Now you will say but things took even the opposite turn. Like, we know that, the gap between wealthy and poor even exploded and so on. But I think this was basically a reaction to this threat. In the same way that for me, I provoke now consciously, fascism was cannot be understood without communism. Fascism was a reaction, as Walter Benjamin saw it nicely, to the threat of social revolution. I think the same holds for Trump. So again, here I am not in classical Marxist sense but nonetheless a Marxist. I don’t think it is enough just to have a nice plan. Where do you see antagonisms, present forces, which push push us into this direction? And I see today—sorry, just finish—many tendencies, from, from global warming—can you even imagine even coping with global warming without some kind of international solidarity in a hard sense, let’s not just care about you for you, me for me, let's work together. No, the point will approach where we will discover that it is in our own most egotist interest to cooperate, and that’s the only solution. What I want to interject here is that when it comes to—like, I’m good with the idea that we should plan for some sort of economic world system that could go beyond capitalism. We should call it socialism. However, I’m also aware that what we will be setting up will have its own internal contradictions, that what we will end up with will not be exactly what we planned, and that the key to socialism and overcoming class society will be to have a political body of some form that can take in the contradictions and the changes and the things that go wrong and try again. That we’re not—that we won’t be naturalizing whatever planned system that we’ve set up, but rather we’ll be opening up a space of freedom. That’s the first thing I want to say. But the second thing is—go to "but," go to "but," yeah. Okay, so but, but—this isn’t aimed at you, it’s but I feel as though with Michael Albert and Chomsky and many others that the—what you’re talking about as the immanent critique of the current society isn’t present. They—they’re not capable of somehow seeing the dialectical relationship between the values that they hold dear and that they’re fighting for and their opposite. And that's—if there's anything that I’ve gotten out of reading your work, it’s appreciation of that—of that dialectical relationship, of the reversal. And—and what I’m wondering is what is it about seeing that reality, seeing the way say liberal modernity on the one hand privileges individuals, on the other hand wipes out individual personalities—and seeing how those two things almost necessarily come together. Why is that so difficult for a particular kind of radical today, and do you think that that difficulty is the reason why they—they dismiss your work? That the block on that kind of internal or immanent critique, their inability to take up an immanent critique, is the difficulty that you’re facing when you try to communicate. No, here I’m even more—I’m horrified of this word—vulgar materialist. You say they cannot take it, but nonetheless let’s begin with this pessimist starting point and nonetheless ask ourselves how many of these utopian critical demands are now almost universally recognized, like in words, not in acts. We know now this scandal in European Union and so on, how they cannot cope not even in vaccines, but the principle is established. Universal health care, everybody should be covered, the only way to beat the pandemic is through universal solidarity. Of course the system cheats, but it cheats with regard to the terms that the system itself has to recognize, for example this. So again, when you say they don’t accept it—here I am again an elitist pessimist. I don’t think there will be an era where everybody will read Hegel and they will understand nicely and so on and so on. But—in dialectical details. But nonetheless, it’s incredible—here I try to be the realist—it’s incredible how many of these demands are part of the new—I mean this, I use this term not in any ironic sense but in a very positive sense—of a new, let's call it political common sense. It’s now more or less, not quite but nonetheless, accepted that we need not only universal health care within nation states but a more globalized approach, if you don’t live in New Zealand where they can isolate themselves and so on and so on. And also another thing that I—sorry, let me go step by step. So nonetheless I see here a tendency for the first time after long decades. The last epoch was classical welfare state, especially European social democracy, where also equality, universal health care, universal free education and so on went—were accepted. Now I see it’s a unique example again of many of similar demands gaining in some sense gaining popularity. Even—and that's where my crazy reading enters—even in a totally mystified way. Like, you know, I have some old radical leftist friends. You know what their reaction to intrusion into Capital was? My god, that's what we should be doing. The wrong guys did it. You know, I think
unpredictability and openness. You always have to take into account that what you plan to do will go terribly wrong. Revolutions have to fail and so on and so on. And I’m more and more approaching this, and that would be my—I don't know the details, I’ll admit it—the critique of the book on participatory democracy, you know. Because I take another Hegelian point here: how does he imagine that this will happen? First, I don't like people who make plans. Plans are excellent, but at one level I hope we both—but which force will realize them? Marx had serious limitations, but he saw this correctly and I think in a too idealist way, Marx saw the agent in reality, working class, which will push towards this realization. Things went wrong. But today that's why I—I will say now something horrible which horrified Chomsky and so on—that's why I not supported Trump but said that Trump would have been better, you know. I want people who make appear, who brought to explosion the immanent antagonisms of the existing order. Maybe in a too naive way, I saw Trump as somebody who nonetheless ruined the—ruined the hegemonic consensus before him. Something new happened. It was horrible, I know. But I claim in this sense Trump is part of the same process as on the other extreme—but extremist for me not a bad term—Bernie Sanders and so on and so on. It is very important not to be afraid of this. Second thing, maybe it was too naive my reading of Covid as giving us a chance. But isn’t it clear and it’s becoming more and more clear that Covid, although these demands are already neglected, turned into their opposite, but that Covid for the first time through Covid, that’s what fascinates me in the pandemic, things that were—if you or me were to say them a year and a half ago, we would have been laughed off. Haha, you are utopian socialist, you wanted communism in the United States. But let's see what even Trump had to do: elements—I know how he cheated—elements of universal basic income, elements of direct socialization in the sense, okay, of state intervention into economy, elements of—not so much Trump but others—some kind of egalitarian solidarity and so on. I think that Covid brought out some kind of tendency which I risk to name communist. Now you will say but things took even the opposite turn. Like, we know that, the gap between wealthy and poor even exploded and so on. But I think this was basically a reaction to this threat. In the same way that for me, I provoke now consciously, fascism was cannot be understood without communism. Fascism was a reaction, as Walter Benjamin saw it nicely, to the threat of social revolution. I think the same holds for Trump. So again, here I am not in classical Marxist sense but nonetheless a Marxist. I don’t think it is enough just to have a nice plan. Where do you see antagonisms, present forces, which push push us into this direction? And I see today—sorry, just finish—many tendencies, from, from global warming—can you even imagine even coping with global warming without some kind of international solidarity in a hard sense, let’s not just care about you for you, me for me, let's work together. No, the point will approach where we will discover that it is in our own most egotist interest to cooperate, and that’s the only solution. What I want to interject here is that when it comes to—like, I’m good with the idea that we should plan for some sort of economic world system that could go beyond capitalism. We should call it socialism. However, I’m also aware that what we will be setting up will have its own internal contradictions, that what we will end up with will not be exactly what we planned, and that the key to socialism and overcoming class society will be to have a political body of some form that can take in the contradictions and the changes and the things that go wrong and try again. That we’re not—that we won’t be naturalizing whatever planned system that we’ve set up, but rather we’ll be opening up a space of freedom. That’s the first thing I want to say. But the second thing is—go to "but," go to "but," yeah. Okay, so but, but—this isn’t aimed at you, it’s but I feel as though with Michael Albert and Chomsky and many others that the—what you’re talking about as the immanent critique of the current society isn’t present. They—they’re not capable of somehow seeing the dialectical relationship between the values that they hold dear and that they’re fighting for and their opposite. And that's—if there's anything that I’ve gotten out of reading your work, it’s appreciation of that—of that dialectical relationship, of the reversal. And—and what I’m wondering is what is it about seeing that reality, seeing the way say liberal modernity on the one hand privileges individuals, on the other hand wipes out individual personalities—and seeing how those two things almost necessarily come together. Why is that so difficult for a particular kind of radical today, and do you think that that difficulty is the reason why they—they dismiss your work? That the block on that kind of internal or immanent critique, their inability to take up an immanent critique, is the difficulty that you’re facing when you try to communicate. No, here I’m even more—I’m horrified of this word—vulgar materialist. You say they cannot take it, but nonetheless let’s begin with this pessimist starting point and nonetheless ask ourselves how many of these utopian critical demands are now almost universally recognized, like in words, not in acts. We know now this scandal in European Union and so on, how they cannot cope not even in vaccines, but the principle is established. Universal health care, everybody should be covered, the only way to beat the pandemic is through universal solidarity. Of course the system cheats, but it cheats with regard to the terms that the system itself has to recognize, for example this. So again, when you say they don’t accept it—here I am again an elitist pessimist. I don’t think there will be an era where everybody will read Hegel and they will understand nicely and so on and so on. But—in dialectical details. But nonetheless, it’s incredible—here I try to be the realist—it’s incredible how many of these demands are part of the new—I mean this, I use this term not in any ironic sense but in a very positive sense—of a new, let's call it political common sense. It’s now more or less, not quite but nonetheless, accepted that we need not only universal health care within nation states but a more globalized approach, if you don’t live in New Zealand where they can isolate themselves and so on and so on. And also another thing that I—sorry, let me go step by step. So nonetheless I see here a tendency for the first time after long decades. The last epoch was classical welfare state, especially European social democracy, where also equality, universal health care, universal free education and so on went—were accepted. Now I see it’s a unique example again of many of similar demands gaining in some sense gaining popularity. Even—and that's where my crazy reading enters—even in a totally mystified way. Like, you know, I have some old radical leftist friends. You know what their reaction to intrusion into Capital was? My god, that's what we should be doing. The wrong guys did it. You know, I think
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that one should not just say as the establishment liberalists, this is horrible, undermines our democracy. Not only, it also shows the vacuity and falsity of democracy. Don't just ask where Trump is mystifying things. Also ask how was a figure like Trump possible, what went wrong in—and here I am maybe a little bit critical, I don't want to go into details now, Chomsky and so on. But you know, just him, but in this tendency of being obsessed with, how should I put it naively, how the system is cheating, lying, manipulating us and so on. Here enters also my Hegelian aspect. I would say that those in power in order to manipulate us also have to manipulate themselves. What interests me more than Chomsky is not
that one should not just say as the establishment liberalists, this is horrible, undermines our democracy. Not only, it also shows the vacuity and falsity of democracy. Don't just ask where Trump is mystifying things. Also ask how was a figure like Trump possible, what went wrong in—and here I am maybe a little bit critical, I don't want to go into details now, Chomsky and so on. But you know, just him, but in this tendency of being obsessed with, how should I put it naively, how the system is cheating, lying, manipulating us and so on. Here enters also my Hegelian aspect. I would say that those in power in order to manipulate us also have to manipulate themselves. What interests me more than Chomsky is not
Slavoj Žižek
to prove how they lie,
to prove how they lie,
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they manipulate. What interests me is in what trap, sorry, not tramp, in what trap they themselves are caught. It always fascinates me. For example, I know that Trumpian protesters and so on, we know now the story. They were not these proverbial poor white people who are disappointed at capitalism and got for wrong reasons got into Trump’s field. They have in some sense and in a very mystified sense, they have genuine concerns. What they are saying about how the system manipulates us and so on is true, just with the mystified twist that they have. You see this is what always—what always fascinates me to, to find this, how should I call it, even emancipatory motive even in the worst totalitarianisms, which is then radically mystified and so on and so on. You know, even—even in Stalinism you find this. I’m totally opposed to those systems. But here maybe is the difference, that as far as I see with Chomsky you have an evil system which manipulates, manufactures consent and so on and so on. I try to describe their own trap as it were. How those who
they manipulate. What interests me is in what trap, sorry, not tramp, in what trap they themselves are caught. It always fascinates me. For example, I know that Trumpian protesters and so on, we know now the story. They were not these proverbial poor white people who are disappointed at capitalism and got for wrong reasons got into Trump’s field. They have in some sense and in a very mystified sense, they have genuine concerns. What they are saying about how the system manipulates us and so on is true, just with the mystified twist that they have. You see this is what always—what always fascinates me to, to find this, how should I call it, even emancipatory motive even in the worst totalitarianisms, which is then radically mystified and so on and so on. You know, even—even in Stalinism you find this. I’m totally opposed to those systems. But here maybe is the difference, that as far as I see with Chomsky you have an evil system which manipulates, manufactures consent and so on and so on. I try to describe their own trap as it were. How those who
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manipulate are manipulating themselves also. What interests me is not that they are cynical and manipulate us but what interests me—interests me—is in what they
manipulate are manipulating themselves also. What interests me is not that they are cynical and manipulate us but what interests me—interests me—is in what they
Slavoj Žižek
believe. That’s for me the critique of ideology. Sorry. But what you are pointing to I think is the fact that there's an objective—system—system of relationships which dictates to even the ruling class not only like what kinds of policies are on the table, but also like the—the future, their own future failure. Like we—we have, you know, problems presented to us that we can't solve within this current political social system and that leads the political elites to try various things which are even from the start kind of known to be failures. I want if I can get to Latour. I'm not sure if I've got a good segue. I remember your question, yes. Yeah, it seems like we have to have a—an understanding of the dynamics of history and that this is very difficult to get to. Like, to understand the relationship between our own ideas and the past is something that Latour is trying to, to write about when he wrote about the Pharaoh. Modernity doesn't exist and so on, yeah. Right, right. Like he was saying, oh tuberculosis didn’t exist when the Pharaoh died therefore he couldn’t have died of tuberculosis, and in fact tuberculosis is a cultural product of this current moment and we can't project it back into the past. We—and so I’m wondering if we can find if we found the dynamic that produced that connected us to the past, to ancient Egypt and into modernity, if we could see a logic of history, if we then would have a better way to make judgments about the past without trying to naturalize as final our judgments. In other words, maybe tuberculosis isn’t true, maybe it is a fiction, maybe it will be replaced by a more interesting and comprehensive and explanation of disease later, but we can still say in this
believe. That’s for me the critique of ideology. Sorry. But what you are pointing to I think is the fact that there's an objective—system—system of relationships which dictates to even the ruling class not only like what kinds of policies are on the table, but also like the—the future, their own future failure. Like we—we have, you know, problems presented to us that we can't solve within this current political social system and that leads the political elites to try various things which are even from the start kind of known to be failures. I want if I can get to Latour. I'm not sure if I've got a good segue. I remember your question, yes. Yeah, it seems like we have to have a—an understanding of the dynamics of history and that this is very difficult to get to. Like, to understand the relationship between our own ideas and the past is something that Latour is trying to, to write about when he wrote about the Pharaoh. Modernity doesn't exist and so on, yeah. Right, right. Like he was saying, oh tuberculosis didn’t exist when the Pharaoh died therefore he couldn’t have died of tuberculosis, and in fact tuberculosis is a cultural product of this current moment and we can't project it back into the past. We—and so I’m wondering if we can find if we found the dynamic that produced that connected us to the past, to ancient Egypt and into modernity, if we could see a logic of history, if we then would have a better way to make judgments about the past without trying to naturalize as final our judgments. In other words, maybe tuberculosis isn’t true, maybe it is a fiction, maybe it will be replaced by a more interesting and comprehensive and explanation of disease later, but we can still say in this
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historical moment based
historical moment based
Slavoj Žižek
on the way history has worked out that—that the Pharaoh died of tuberculosis. One of my favorite—most striking ones is one of the very few who actually is a scientist and knows something about science. Latour has a background in science and philosophy of science. I go through an article of his and I think I'm remembering correctly in which he—he’s somebody in France had or somewhere had discovered that one of the Pharaohs had died of tuberculosis, and they did it by, you know, analysis of whatever DNA or something. Latour wrote an article ridiculing this because he says it's totally absurd. Because nobody had talked about tuberculosis—Yeah, tuberculosis only discovered in the nineteenth century, how could a—and everything’s a social construction and—And therefore it wasn’t constructed yet so it couldn't have died. So it didn’t happen. I mean, you know, it—No, no, here, here I although I do appreciate Latour for example when he said very nicely, you know this statement that I quoted widely, that—that the pandemic is just a dress rehearsal for the troubles to come from global warming and so on. So it's not we control the pandemic through vaccines and then oh, now the only debate is in this crazy with this crazy optimists in the date, will it be already June or maybe September or at least the end of the year that life will be back to normal. It will not come ever, I claim. We are entering a new era. But, you know where I would in my—I will try to explain it as clearly as possible—it’s well we have to go to more philosophical waters now, dialectical. My, I reject this radical historicization of sciences, you know. Of course, it’s easy to show there is no modern science without modern capitalism and so on and so on. But I don't think this relativizes it. So my enemy, under quotation marks, it's here Michel Foucault. I think with his use of the term, this did the most damage I think, of "truth effect," that every specific discourse has its own effect of truth. And that we cannot universalize it.
on the way history has worked out that—that the Pharaoh died of tuberculosis. One of my favorite—most striking ones is one of the very few who actually is a scientist and knows something about science. Latour has a background in science and philosophy of science. I go through an article of his and I think I'm remembering correctly in which he—he’s somebody in France had or somewhere had discovered that one of the Pharaohs had died of tuberculosis, and they did it by, you know, analysis of whatever DNA or something. Latour wrote an article ridiculing this because he says it's totally absurd. Because nobody had talked about tuberculosis—Yeah, tuberculosis only discovered in the nineteenth century, how could a—and everything’s a social construction and—And therefore it wasn’t constructed yet so it couldn't have died. So it didn’t happen. I mean, you know, it—No, no, here, here I although I do appreciate Latour for example when he said very nicely, you know this statement that I quoted widely, that—that the pandemic is just a dress rehearsal for the troubles to come from global warming and so on. So it's not we control the pandemic through vaccines and then oh, now the only debate is in this crazy with this crazy optimists in the date, will it be already June or maybe September or at least the end of the year that life will be back to normal. It will not come ever, I claim. We are entering a new era. But, you know where I would in my—I will try to explain it as clearly as possible—it’s well we have to go to more philosophical waters now, dialectical. My, I reject this radical historicization of sciences, you know. Of course, it’s easy to show there is no modern science without modern capitalism and so on and so on. But I don't think this relativizes it. So my enemy, under quotation marks, it's here Michel Foucault. I think with his use of the term, this did the most damage I think, of "truth effect," that every specific discourse has its own effect of truth. And that we cannot universalize it.
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What he means is science
What he means is science
Slavoj Žižek
defines in its own
defines in its own
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terms what is true. True is a
terms what is true. True is a
Slavoj Žižek
factual statement which can be confirmed through measurement, blah blah and so on. Mysticism, religious experience has its own measure of truth. A common sense has its own measure—has its own measure of truth. For example, I think that at least from modern science, science and common sense split radically. And I think this reaches the climax with quantum physics. Already relativity theory contains propositions which simply cannot be translated back into our common sense notion of reality. But what I’m saying is—I may sound almost a positivist here—is that not common sense but modern science nonetheless—to put it in my Lacanian terms and here probably Chomsky would have opposed—touch the real in a much more hard way than even common sense does and so on and so on. When quantum physics makes all these absolutely counterintuitive propositions, you know, of quantum oscillations, all that retroactively even speculation which sounds like changing the past and so on and so on. You know what bothers so much many ontological realists? It’s a totally crazy theory, but as I read
factual statement which can be confirmed through measurement, blah blah and so on. Mysticism, religious experience has its own measure of truth. A common sense has its own measure—has its own measure of truth. For example, I think that at least from modern science, science and common sense split radically. And I think this reaches the climax with quantum physics. Already relativity theory contains propositions which simply cannot be translated back into our common sense notion of reality. But what I’m saying is—I may sound almost a positivist here—is that not common sense but modern science nonetheless—to put it in my Lacanian terms and here probably Chomsky would have opposed—touch the real in a much more hard way than even common sense does and so on and so on. When quantum physics makes all these absolutely counterintuitive propositions, you know, of quantum oscillations, all that retroactively even speculation which sounds like changing the past and so on and so on. You know what bothers so much many ontological realists? It’s a totally crazy theory, but as I read
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somewhere even much more than Einstein’s relativity theory, if there is a theory which triumphantly survived all the experimental tests it’s quantum physics. And I think it’s not simply another discursive truth effect. It’s more. You can see this precisely by its productivity. Sorry, it’s not a truth effect that you can produce atomic bomb and so on and all that stuff that we are doing now, quantum computers and so on and so on. I’m here an old-fashioned realist. I don’t think you can simply historicize this. But now I’m coming to the point, very nice example that you mentioned. Tuberculosis, no tuberculosis in ancient Egypt. Because clearly the designation tuberculosis is invented by modern medical science and so on. Okay, what I would have added here is that it's not only that we should distinguish present from the past, but that our notion of the past is also always a historical product of our present. How does Latour know what the ancient Egyptians would have thought? Because he has a certain notion of pre-modern tradition, which I think is strictly mediated by the notion
somewhere even much more than Einstein’s relativity theory, if there is a theory which triumphantly survived all the experimental tests it’s quantum physics. And I think it’s not simply another discursive truth effect. It’s more. You can see this precisely by its productivity. Sorry, it’s not a truth effect that you can produce atomic bomb and so on and all that stuff that we are doing now, quantum computers and so on and so on. I’m here an old-fashioned realist. I don’t think you can simply historicize this. But now I’m coming to the point, very nice example that you mentioned. Tuberculosis, no tuberculosis in ancient Egypt. Because clearly the designation tuberculosis is invented by modern medical science and so on. Okay, what I would have added here is that it's not only that we should distinguish present from the past, but that our notion of the past is also always a historical product of our present. How does Latour know what the ancient Egyptians would have thought? Because he has a certain notion of pre-modern tradition, which I think is strictly mediated by the notion
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of modernity. You know the quote that I always repeat from T. S. Eliot, I love intelligent conservatives, who said that every true new work of art doesn't only introduce a break with the past, but in some sense not in reality but in our symbolic space it changes the past. So I think that both—a Foucauldian answer is for me too naively historicist. To say today we speak of tuberculosis in ancient Egypt, I don't know what, they would have thought—I’m speculating—about evil demons, divine punishment, whatever. I don't know. But
of modernity. You know the quote that I always repeat from T. S. Eliot, I love intelligent conservatives, who said that every true new work of art doesn't only introduce a break with the past, but in some sense not in reality but in our symbolic space it changes the past. So I think that both—a Foucauldian answer is for me too naively historicist. To say today we speak of tuberculosis in ancient Egypt, I don't know what, they would have thought—I’m speculating—about evil demons, divine punishment, whatever. I don't know. But
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I think that this image of the past is always mediated through the present. This is why I’m here more radical. Because—okay I cannot, don't, we don't have time now to develop the entire line, but maybe you like this idea. You know that when we speak about rape, feminism and so on. Now I will show it may surprise you my politically correct part, you know. You know many not even conservatives but like again historicist liberals would have said that like a category, okay I will apply Latour
I think that this image of the past is always mediated through the present. This is why I’m here more radical. Because—okay I cannot, don't, we don't have time now to develop the entire line, but maybe you like this idea. You know that when we speak about rape, feminism and so on. Now I will show it may surprise you my politically correct part, you know. You know many not even conservatives but like again historicist liberals would have said that like a category, okay I will apply Latour
Slavoj Žižek
to what you quoted from Latour to another
to what you quoted from Latour to another
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level: rape. I agree that what counts today not only—I agree with this notion, so
level: rape. I agree that what counts today not only—I agree with this notion, so
Slavoj Žižek
it's not only
it's not only
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some politically
some politically
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correct madness but common sense, it’s a good common sense
correct madness but common sense, it’s a good common sense
Slavoj Žižek
today. So what counts today as rape implies that if we use this notion in analyzing the past that I don't know what you have would have said, I would say about at least, sorry for vulgar speculation, cases of heterosexual acts till twentieth century, don’t you agree, would have probably counted as rape by today's standards, you know. Possible, yes. Okay, now am I saying oh we should be historicist? No, I believe in eternity of ideas here. We have the right to apply it to the—to the past. There is more because not because we know better what was in the past than they did, but because—but I will try to be as precise
today. So what counts today as rape implies that if we use this notion in analyzing the past that I don't know what you have would have said, I would say about at least, sorry for vulgar speculation, cases of heterosexual acts till twentieth century, don’t you agree, would have probably counted as rape by today's standards, you know. Possible, yes. Okay, now am I saying oh we should be historicist? No, I believe in eternity of ideas here. We have the right to apply it to the—to the past. There is more because not because we know better what was in the past than they did, but because—but I will try to be as precise
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here as—as possible because it’s part of today’s of experience of our
here as—as possible because it’s part of today’s of experience of our
Slavoj Žižek
present what we consider as ethically acceptable that we view the past also with these notions. You cannot say, yes, today this is brutal colonialism, but the founding fathers of the other colonizers, it was a different horizon, they thought it’s bringing freedom to the savages and so on and so on. You know this is you can excuse almost everything in these terms. So I try to think together this paradox. Yes, it’s clear that again—tuberculosis or what did you the Latour’s example—or let’s say the notion of rape, of sexual oppression, is something that emerged in a specific historical situation. But it throws a new light, it changes the past. Otherwise the position of neutrality is a false one. The position which says yes, today it’s for us rape, these acts count as rape, but in the seventeenth century they would not count as rape, and who knows how it will be in the future and so on and so on. No, here I am—I think again that again every epoch reconstructs its own past. And what I condemn historic—for example, let's take Michel Foucault himself. I think that although they are wonderful readable books, you know his—his—these late works on fashioning the self, inventing pleasures and so on and so on. I don't know if it's true historically or not. But it’s so clearly the image of ancient Greece and Rome mediated by our today's experience. So again, my answer is here paradoxical. I'm at the same time more historicist. What I find problematic in what you quoted from—how is the guy—from Latour is: okay, today it's tuberculosis, we don't know what is for ancient Egyptians. Where does he stand? He presupposes that he is somewhere out of history where he can compare the present and the past. I think this position from where you look at the past is always overdetermined by our—by our—modernity. And that’s even my big question in my friendly but nonetheless polemics with Judith Butler. You know that I always when we met some years ago, I always ask her a simple question. And can you maybe—no, you are not now identifying into Judith Butler for me but—can you answer me this simple—sorry I will stop soon—naive question. When she describes in her mega-hit—we are both unlucky, me and Judith, that we wrote somewhere in the late eighties the big hit, Gender Trouble, Sublime Object, you know, of ideology and now we are trying to catch it—okay, this idea that sexual identity is not biologically or however ideally fixed but is the result of contingent—contingent discursive construction and so on and so on. I ask her what is the status of this very thesis of hers. Is this a universal statement so that we can say that already the cavemen unknowingly when they raped their women or whatever they were discursively constructing their identity, you know, or is this nonetheless at the same time something which emerged in our specifically emerged and could have emerged only in our time. My position is it’s both at the same time. Because to say sex as a discursive contract is something that holds only for our time and then you describe the past as essentialist primitive, it’s already a notion of the past possible only from our present. So you see my—I don't have time to explain—my position is here pretty paradoxical. At the same time I’m more historicist but in this way I try to overcome historicism. But again at the same time, just to finish, because I’m now written a new text on it. You know Lacan is not discourse theorist in the sense that truth is just a truth effect. In certain so that every discursive practice has its own proceedings, procedures, strategies that construct its specific truth notion. For Lacan truth is not an effect but as Lacan says directly in his key writing, "Science et la vérité," Science and Truth, truth is a cause in psychoanalysis. Not in positive science, that’s the big difference. For positive science you have—you have positive knowledge. How this knowledge is subjectively mediated is by definition irrelevant. Science erases it. The definition of science is anyone who reproduces this experiment will do it, it doesn’t matter where do you stand. Where I remain part of European philosophical continental legacy is that I think that there is a dimension of truth, subjective but not subjectivist, it’s social subjective truth, which cannot be reduced to positive knowledge. My eternal example, just to remind your—our listeners, is that wonderful example of—of Lacan, you know. Let's say I'm a male chauvinist man and suspect my wife of cheating, sleeping with other men. Even if my accusation are true—accusation, she really is doing it—my jealousy is still a lie because my jealousy is my way of—of coping with my basic sexual identity, of asserting my superiority, power and so on. And I apply the same to anti-Semitism. You cannot find anti-Semitism on the level of facts. What, you try to prove that Jews really didn't exploit Germans and so on and so on? No, you can—you see here I would like to expose my notion of truth and knowledge. Don't you agree—it's horrible what I will say—that although most of the facts about Jews exploiting Germans were obviously false facts claimed by the Nazis—but nonetheless, I can imagine writing a book on Jewish influence in German public life in where all the facts will be true. It's true, Jews were half of the lawyers were Jews, of art critics and blah blah. But nonetheless, although it's factually true, in a subjective sense it's a lie. I want to say one—go back one step and say what you would tell Judith Butler about—gender identity being a construct—Marx would tell the world about class. And—and what he would say is that only after capitalism can we see that all of history has been the history of class struggle. Yeah, because I—it’s wonderful what you say. That’s my point. Marx says two things here. He says everybody knows this in Communist Manifesto thing, all hitherto history is history of class struggle. But at the same time he says, I think also there, I may be wrong, that capitalists is the first true class in history. Before capitalism you had classes but masked as estates and so on and so on. Another example where one should agree with Latour but go further is the notion of profession. Profession as—Max Weber demonstrated—it’s a modern notion. Profession implies a certain choice of a free Cartesian subjectively. You are not born into your profession, you can choose your profession. But it doesn't hold for previous eras. What I mean this is that it would be ridiculous if you met a guy from medieval society and ask him what’s your profession and he would say my profession is being a knight or whatever. It’s nonsense, right? Because this the—so in this sense, in this sense you know, I try to be here more radically historicist. Back to Judith Butler. I—I think that her notion of what she—she, sorry, dismisses as fundamentalism and so on and so on is not simply wrong but it’s also already mediated by our own contemporary experience. But it’s very important what you said because nonetheless even here I’m not just a radical historicist. Here comes my Lacanian aspect. For Marx class struggle is not simply a historical phenomenon but is a kind of underlying antagonism which traverses all the history so that different epochs of history are different ways to deal with this antagonism. And here is maybe from my standpoint the big difference between me and Judith. I agree with her that all positive identities, gender identities are constructs. But I don't think that this is a pure field of contingency. They are construct by means of which we try to deal with, domesticate, gentrify a certain basic antagonism which defines sexuality. And this—this basic antagonism is not sexual difference in this sense of different gender identities and so on and so on, which is why I’m proud of this speculative moment, when I write about LGBT+. I’d say that the notion of antagonism is not a binary one. It precisely means antagonism is something that cannot ever be fully translated into a clear symbolic opposition like men active, women passive, whatever. These are all constructs. So what I would say is that empirically what Lacan says there is no sexual relationship means precisely that again at the phenomenon level, there are never just men and women. There are men and women and their difference, which is in a model way embodied in LGBT+. For me transgender people are not beyond difference, they're difference at its purest. Antagonism breaks out so things are here more—more complex. Sorry. I have—I have an inner Noam Chomsky in my head or inner Michael Albert and I just know—Wait a minute, when we the people take power you will explain all this in gulag about your inner Chomsky, point. Sorry, go on please. No, but I’m sure that at this point in the conversation which we should be wrapping up that Michael Albert is just shaking his head going "I don't know," but I’m going to make every effort to edit this together and make it as clear as possible. But I agree, I think I see—I mean I still see quite a lot of value in everything you’ve said here. And—And I think—Go to "but," go to "but." No, "but," okay, here’s my "but." But I wish you had said at the start that this antagonism is—what the—the radical liberal anarchists are avoiding. Because I think that this is the key to—the radical liberal position, which is that they act as though there is a field of values that if we were simply not evil people we would hold on to and we could create a better world without having to shift where the antagonism is in the world, without having to hold on to the reality of that antagonism—on some fundamental social—But you know, can I ask you a question to—to conclude? Because this
present what we consider as ethically acceptable that we view the past also with these notions. You cannot say, yes, today this is brutal colonialism, but the founding fathers of the other colonizers, it was a different horizon, they thought it’s bringing freedom to the savages and so on and so on. You know this is you can excuse almost everything in these terms. So I try to think together this paradox. Yes, it’s clear that again—tuberculosis or what did you the Latour’s example—or let’s say the notion of rape, of sexual oppression, is something that emerged in a specific historical situation. But it throws a new light, it changes the past. Otherwise the position of neutrality is a false one. The position which says yes, today it’s for us rape, these acts count as rape, but in the seventeenth century they would not count as rape, and who knows how it will be in the future and so on and so on. No, here I am—I think again that again every epoch reconstructs its own past. And what I condemn historic—for example, let's take Michel Foucault himself. I think that although they are wonderful readable books, you know his—his—these late works on fashioning the self, inventing pleasures and so on and so on. I don't know if it's true historically or not. But it’s so clearly the image of ancient Greece and Rome mediated by our today's experience. So again, my answer is here paradoxical. I'm at the same time more historicist. What I find problematic in what you quoted from—how is the guy—from Latour is: okay, today it's tuberculosis, we don't know what is for ancient Egyptians. Where does he stand? He presupposes that he is somewhere out of history where he can compare the present and the past. I think this position from where you look at the past is always overdetermined by our—by our—modernity. And that’s even my big question in my friendly but nonetheless polemics with Judith Butler. You know that I always when we met some years ago, I always ask her a simple question. And can you maybe—no, you are not now identifying into Judith Butler for me but—can you answer me this simple—sorry I will stop soon—naive question. When she describes in her mega-hit—we are both unlucky, me and Judith, that we wrote somewhere in the late eighties the big hit, Gender Trouble, Sublime Object, you know, of ideology and now we are trying to catch it—okay, this idea that sexual identity is not biologically or however ideally fixed but is the result of contingent—contingent discursive construction and so on and so on. I ask her what is the status of this very thesis of hers. Is this a universal statement so that we can say that already the cavemen unknowingly when they raped their women or whatever they were discursively constructing their identity, you know, or is this nonetheless at the same time something which emerged in our specifically emerged and could have emerged only in our time. My position is it’s both at the same time. Because to say sex as a discursive contract is something that holds only for our time and then you describe the past as essentialist primitive, it’s already a notion of the past possible only from our present. So you see my—I don't have time to explain—my position is here pretty paradoxical. At the same time I’m more historicist but in this way I try to overcome historicism. But again at the same time, just to finish, because I’m now written a new text on it. You know Lacan is not discourse theorist in the sense that truth is just a truth effect. In certain so that every discursive practice has its own proceedings, procedures, strategies that construct its specific truth notion. For Lacan truth is not an effect but as Lacan says directly in his key writing, "Science et la vérité," Science and Truth, truth is a cause in psychoanalysis. Not in positive science, that’s the big difference. For positive science you have—you have positive knowledge. How this knowledge is subjectively mediated is by definition irrelevant. Science erases it. The definition of science is anyone who reproduces this experiment will do it, it doesn’t matter where do you stand. Where I remain part of European philosophical continental legacy is that I think that there is a dimension of truth, subjective but not subjectivist, it’s social subjective truth, which cannot be reduced to positive knowledge. My eternal example, just to remind your—our listeners, is that wonderful example of—of Lacan, you know. Let's say I'm a male chauvinist man and suspect my wife of cheating, sleeping with other men. Even if my accusation are true—accusation, she really is doing it—my jealousy is still a lie because my jealousy is my way of—of coping with my basic sexual identity, of asserting my superiority, power and so on. And I apply the same to anti-Semitism. You cannot find anti-Semitism on the level of facts. What, you try to prove that Jews really didn't exploit Germans and so on and so on? No, you can—you see here I would like to expose my notion of truth and knowledge. Don't you agree—it's horrible what I will say—that although most of the facts about Jews exploiting Germans were obviously false facts claimed by the Nazis—but nonetheless, I can imagine writing a book on Jewish influence in German public life in where all the facts will be true. It's true, Jews were half of the lawyers were Jews, of art critics and blah blah. But nonetheless, although it's factually true, in a subjective sense it's a lie. I want to say one—go back one step and say what you would tell Judith Butler about—gender identity being a construct—Marx would tell the world about class. And—and what he would say is that only after capitalism can we see that all of history has been the history of class struggle. Yeah, because I—it’s wonderful what you say. That’s my point. Marx says two things here. He says everybody knows this in Communist Manifesto thing, all hitherto history is history of class struggle. But at the same time he says, I think also there, I may be wrong, that capitalists is the first true class in history. Before capitalism you had classes but masked as estates and so on and so on. Another example where one should agree with Latour but go further is the notion of profession. Profession as—Max Weber demonstrated—it’s a modern notion. Profession implies a certain choice of a free Cartesian subjectively. You are not born into your profession, you can choose your profession. But it doesn't hold for previous eras. What I mean this is that it would be ridiculous if you met a guy from medieval society and ask him what’s your profession and he would say my profession is being a knight or whatever. It’s nonsense, right? Because this the—so in this sense, in this sense you know, I try to be here more radically historicist. Back to Judith Butler. I—I think that her notion of what she—she, sorry, dismisses as fundamentalism and so on and so on is not simply wrong but it’s also already mediated by our own contemporary experience. But it’s very important what you said because nonetheless even here I’m not just a radical historicist. Here comes my Lacanian aspect. For Marx class struggle is not simply a historical phenomenon but is a kind of underlying antagonism which traverses all the history so that different epochs of history are different ways to deal with this antagonism. And here is maybe from my standpoint the big difference between me and Judith. I agree with her that all positive identities, gender identities are constructs. But I don't think that this is a pure field of contingency. They are construct by means of which we try to deal with, domesticate, gentrify a certain basic antagonism which defines sexuality. And this—this basic antagonism is not sexual difference in this sense of different gender identities and so on and so on, which is why I’m proud of this speculative moment, when I write about LGBT+. I’d say that the notion of antagonism is not a binary one. It precisely means antagonism is something that cannot ever be fully translated into a clear symbolic opposition like men active, women passive, whatever. These are all constructs. So what I would say is that empirically what Lacan says there is no sexual relationship means precisely that again at the phenomenon level, there are never just men and women. There are men and women and their difference, which is in a model way embodied in LGBT+. For me transgender people are not beyond difference, they're difference at its purest. Antagonism breaks out so things are here more—more complex. Sorry. I have—I have an inner Noam Chomsky in my head or inner Michael Albert and I just know—Wait a minute, when we the people take power you will explain all this in gulag about your inner Chomsky, point. Sorry, go on please. No, but I’m sure that at this point in the conversation which we should be wrapping up that Michael Albert is just shaking his head going "I don't know," but I’m going to make every effort to edit this together and make it as clear as possible. But I agree, I think I see—I mean I still see quite a lot of value in everything you’ve said here. And—And I think—Go to "but," go to "but." No, "but," okay, here’s my "but." But I wish you had said at the start that this antagonism is—what the—the radical liberal anarchists are avoiding. Because I think that this is the key to—the radical liberal position, which is that they act as though there is a field of values that if we were simply not evil people we would hold on to and we could create a better world without having to shift where the antagonism is in the world, without having to hold on to the reality of that antagonism—on some fundamental social—But you know, can I ask you a question to—to conclude? Because this
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really interests me sincerely, not as a joke. Listen, when you said that my symbolic opponent whom I appreciate very much, not Chomsky, Albert, you said—that he would have said that he has this
really interests me sincerely, not as a joke. Listen, when you said that my symbolic opponent whom I appreciate very much, not Chomsky, Albert, you said—that he would have said that he has this
Slavoj Žižek
vision of participatory democracy and so on and so on. A very naive question, sincere, not even critical directly. What does he imagine how could this new
vision of participatory democracy and so on and so on. A very naive question, sincere, not even critical directly. What does he imagine how could this new
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society emerge? Does
society emerge? Does
Slavoj Žižek
we—when we win elections the anarchists will what will happen? Because you know what’s so interesting? Many friends of mine, anarchists, other radicals, they claim we need a crisis, we need a global shattering crisis. And I will not name them, two and three very well known, even told me maybe a large ecological or nuclear catastrophe will help us, it’s our only chance. And then one or two on them even said maybe we should discreetly organize it. You know, this is a very sad statement, you know. Because it so—so how does Albert, that guy, how does he imagine that this will happen? I think he believes that through activism and—Yeah but how, how? Well, look—okay, you get a ground movement. Will it—how will it? It’s—it’s a problem, you know, it’s a problem. And that's why I celebrate the pandemic. Not—I’m not a pervert, I don't like people dying, I pray to god that the vaccine will work. But you know, you need people shattered. You know things to—you need things to start to move. And again for me in spite of all the manipulations, you know. Now, my god, this is also the result of Trump and last years that now you know what a revolution this is. Now in United States, after decades for the first time it’s legitimate to say publicly I’m a socialist. You’re not excluded to some margin. This is for me gradual progress at its best. Well I don't know if I agree with that. I think you're too optimistic. But—But this is a fact. Now I will play Chomsky to you. This is a fact. You can be Bernie Sanders, whatever he is, marginalized, he is not excluded. You can be. Is he not excluded or did we just—De facto he is of course, he is. But nonetheless he’s part of the space. You know I imagine from my youth when the word socialism was totally prohibited in, I mean in United States and so on, you know. I live in Portland, Oregon. So my view of the world is very warped. Like, I as a Marxist am probably the most conservative
we—when we win elections the anarchists will what will happen? Because you know what’s so interesting? Many friends of mine, anarchists, other radicals, they claim we need a crisis, we need a global shattering crisis. And I will not name them, two and three very well known, even told me maybe a large ecological or nuclear catastrophe will help us, it’s our only chance. And then one or two on them even said maybe we should discreetly organize it. You know, this is a very sad statement, you know. Because it so—so how does Albert, that guy, how does he imagine that this will happen? I think he believes that through activism and—Yeah but how, how? Well, look—okay, you get a ground movement. Will it—how will it? It’s—it’s a problem, you know, it’s a problem. And that's why I celebrate the pandemic. Not—I’m not a pervert, I don't like people dying, I pray to god that the vaccine will work. But you know, you need people shattered. You know things to—you need things to start to move. And again for me in spite of all the manipulations, you know. Now, my god, this is also the result of Trump and last years that now you know what a revolution this is. Now in United States, after decades for the first time it’s legitimate to say publicly I’m a socialist. You’re not excluded to some margin. This is for me gradual progress at its best. Well I don't know if I agree with that. I think you're too optimistic. But—But this is a fact. Now I will play Chomsky to you. This is a fact. You can be Bernie Sanders, whatever he is, marginalized, he is not excluded. You can be. Is he not excluded or did we just—De facto he is of course, he is. But nonetheless he’s part of the space. You know I imagine from my youth when the word socialism was totally prohibited in, I mean in United States and so on, you know. I live in Portland, Oregon. So my view of the world is very warped. Like, I as a Marxist am probably the most conservative
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person amongst my peer group, you
person amongst my peer group, you
Slavoj Žižek
know, because I didn't burn down the library or something. But—but yes,
know, because I didn't burn down the library or something. But—but yes,
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no you’re right, it is true that now in American politics for the first time there’s a glimmer of a hope. A glimmer, it’s a small glimmer, yes. But I think it's—No I'm just saying, yeah. I’m not—don’t support—I think Biden is triumphant, okay? I think Biden defeated Sanders. Biden is triumphant. The liberal neoliberal order may have to change but it won't change into socialism unless and a lot of the left has been absorbed into the Democratic Party. Yeah but I—what I think is that not give peace a chance but give time
no you’re right, it is true that now in American politics for the first time there’s a glimmer of a hope. A glimmer, it’s a small glimmer, yes. But I think it's—No I'm just saying, yeah. I’m not—don’t support—I think Biden is triumphant, okay? I think Biden defeated Sanders. Biden is triumphant. The liberal neoliberal order may have to change but it won't change into socialism unless and a lot of the left has been absorbed into the Democratic Party. Yeah but I—what I think is that not give peace a chance but give time
Slavoj Žižek
a chance. There will be new crisis and so on, I think we should be more radical what you call democratic socialist and just, you know, warn, this will happen and so on and so on. It’s not a bright future but you know like I still in a naive way believe that there are more and more signs that the system as we know it cannot reproduce itself endlessly. That's why
a chance. There will be new crisis and so on, I think we should be more radical what you call democratic socialist and just, you know, warn, this will happen and so on and so on. It’s not a bright future but you know like I still in a naive way believe that there are more and more signs that the system as we know it cannot reproduce itself endlessly. That's why
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we had Trump. He saw it. Trump
we had Trump. He saw it. Trump
Slavoj Žižek
is a reaction to this threat. That's why as I wrote maybe you read it in the last issue of Spectator US, it’s typical how only moderate conservatives like to publish me today. You know, these WallStreetBets and all that, you know. This is—this is for me a mega-obscure—a mega-ominous symptom for those in power. Because it’s
is a reaction to this threat. That's why as I wrote maybe you read it in the last issue of Spectator US, it’s typical how only moderate conservatives like to publish me today. You know, these WallStreetBets and all that, you know. This is—this is for me a mega-obscure—a mega-ominous symptom for those in power. Because it’s
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not
not
Slavoj Žižek
external Mexican world occurs or nature causing catastrophes,
external Mexican world occurs or nature causing catastrophes,
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resisting, is that something very
resisting, is that something very
Slavoj Žižek
weird exploded from the heart of the system itself. It will not ruin the system, I’m not dreaming about this. But what I’m saying is that what was clearly shown was the immanent limitation of the system. Because as I’ve written there—they even have a nice dream, WallStreetBets and so on. Their dream is that of purely truly popular capitalism. The dream is
weird exploded from the heart of the system itself. It will not ruin the system, I’m not dreaming about this. But what I’m saying is that what was clearly shown was the immanent limitation of the system. Because as I’ve written there—they even have a nice dream, WallStreetBets and so on. Their dream is that of purely truly popular capitalism. The dream is
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not
not
Slavoj Žižek
just the elite on Wall Street but all of us. The dream is this one: we all work somewhere normally through the day,
just the elite on Wall Street but all of us. The dream is this one: we all work somewhere normally through the day,
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in the evening
in the evening
Slavoj Žižek
instead of having sex or drinking with friends, we play half an hour, you know. It’s a nice dream but it’s structurally impossible
instead of having sex or drinking with friends, we play half an hour, you know. It’s a nice dream but it’s structurally impossible
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and it points toward a limitation of the system. I think crises are ahead. Listen, I want to wrap up our conversation with a
and it points toward a limitation of the system. I think crises are ahead. Listen, I want to wrap up our conversation with a
Slavoj Žižek
personal question if
personal question if
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I can. How are you—how’s your writing career going? Are you really—have you really been relegated to only publishing in right-wing spaces or going on RT? No, I must say that I got some hints now that—because many people reproach to me this, you are Putin’s—Putin’s supporter by the public in Russia today.
I can. How are you—how’s your writing career going? Are you really—have you really been relegated to only publishing in right-wing spaces or going on RT? No, I must say that I got some hints now that—because many people reproach to me this, you are Putin’s—Putin’s supporter by the public in Russia today.
Slavoj Žižek
It’s over. It looks—it looks that I am also out of that space now, excluded, you know. So it’s just a very tragic. This liberal left for reasons that you enumerated don’t like me. Real conservatives my name cannot even be prohibited, sorry, cannot even be mentioned. It’s totally prohibited. But this doesn’t disturb me, I mean. Like, even if you are alone voice you have to tell the truth. In the long term it works, I think.
It’s over. It looks—it looks that I am also out of that space now, excluded, you know. So it’s just a very tragic. This liberal left for reasons that you enumerated don’t like me. Real conservatives my name cannot even be prohibited, sorry, cannot even be mentioned. It’s totally prohibited. But this doesn’t disturb me, I mean. Like, even if you are alone voice you have to tell the truth. In the long term it works, I think.