Slavoj Zizek: Kant, Modernity and Anti-Semitism | Video Lecture Series (2/3)
Lecture · Philosofried ·
published 2020-02-02 · 0:20:50 · 2,511 words
the date above is when the video was uploaded, no recording date was found
capitalismideologypsychoanalysishegel-dialecticsfascism-populismrace-antisemitismliberalism-political-correctnessphilosophy-generalscience-physicscinema-art-culturesubjectivity
Žižek opens with a provocative 'Sieg Heil' to analyse anti-Semitism as the projection of an inherent social antagonism onto the external figure of the Jew, then mounts a Marxist reversal: class struggle comes first, the Jew is invented to explain it. He generalises this into a critique of 'alternative modernity' (politically correct, historicist nominalism), arguing fascism was the first such alternate-modernity project and that antagonism is inherent to the universal notion of capitalist modernity itself, so every particular modernity is a reaction covering up that deadlock. He then develops the ontological thesis of a 'pure difference' prior to its terms (via left/right, sexual difference, the Lacanian primordially-repressed binary signifier, a Woody Allen gag, Tarkovsky's spiritual materialism, and quantum physics) as the basis for a 'pure formalism' he calls formal materialism. He closes with Kant's distinction between negative and indefinite judgment ('you aren't human' vs 'you are inhuman', 'you aren't dead' vs 'you are undead') to argue human freedom is an inhuman, ex-timate excess inherent to humanity itself, neither nature nor culture.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 21
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Invoked as the Marxist name for the antagonism that 'comes first', before the figure of the Jew is projected to explain disorder.
The immanent curvature/imbalance of social space that, for Žižek, precedes and grounds any external enemy-figure like the Jew.
as “real as virtual”
The notion he says can help critically reject the category of alternative modernity, by rethinking the real as a virtual/immanent imbalance.
as “alternative modernity”
His name for the politically-correct post-colonial idea that non-Western modernities could modernise without capitalism's alienating effects, a target he rejects as historicist nominalism.
The pseudo-deconstructionist move 'there is no modernity as such, only particular modernities', which he says displaces antagonism onto one species of modernity and is therefore ideological.
His thesis that wars, concentration camps, fundamentalism are part of the very project of capitalist modernity, not a regression or an accident of one Western form of it.
Frankfurt School name he cites as one of the names for the antagonistic potential inherent in the project of capitalist modernity.
Habermas's framing he rejects, that current pathologies are a sign modernity is incomplete rather than inherent to its very project.
His reversal: the struggle is not at the level of particular contents within a neutral universal container, but universality itself is the site of antagonism, and particulars are reactions to it.
as “formal materialism”
His 'materialism of the difference': a pure formalism that needs no positivity of matter, the minimal feature of materialism being that there is a pure difference, a crack within the one.
The primordial fact he posits, the one cannot coincide with itself, a crack/antagonism within the order of the one, distinguished from mythological polar opposites (yin/yang etc.).
Lacanian thesis he cites: the second element is always missing; this lack of the counterpoint sets in motion the generation of multiplicity.
Freudian mechanism he uses to read the eruption of all Dostoevsky's titles in Woody Allen's Love and Death, the absent Dostoevsky returning as the repressed supplement to Tolstoy.
A difference paradoxically prior to the two terms it is the difference between; the two positive terms appear afterwards as attempts to dominate/cover up the tension of this difference.
as “spiritual materialism”
His label for the position (exemplified by Tarkovsky) that clings to the density, inertia and earthy stuff of matter, which he says is actually today's idealism/spiritualism.
The name he gives to the structural insight that difference comes first, which he insists is not idealism but the core of radical materialism.
as “negative judgment”
Kant's category: 'you aren't human' merely places the subject outside humanity (animal/divine), contrasted with the indefinite 'you are inhuman'.
as “indefinite judgment”
Kant's distinction: affirming a non-predicate ('you are inhuman') is not the same as negating a predicate ('you aren't human'), the former marks an excess inherent to the thing itself.
as “the undead”
Stephen King / horror category he uses to model inhuman freedom: 'alive precisely as dead', the figure of an excess inherent to life, not external to it.
as “inhuman excess”
The zero-level monstrous wild freedom that cultural symbolic prohibition tries to domesticate, neither nature nor culture but inherent to humanity.
Lacan's term he adopts for the inhuman dimension inherent to humanity itself, an excess that is intimate yet external, like the undead.
Stories he reaches for 4
Tarkovsky, the arch-spiritual director, is obsessed with the inertia and density of matter: his heroes pray by immersing their heads in mud rather than looking upward, illustrating today's idealism, which is the very clinging to dense, earthy matter that Žižek contrasts with formal materialism.
“When heroes are praying, they don't pray looking upwards. They pray by sometimes literally immersing their heads into mud, close contact with earth.”
Kant's distinction: 'you aren't human' places you outside humanity (animal/divine), but 'you are inhuman' affirms a non-predicate, a non-humanity that is an excess inherent to humanity itself; this is the structure of human freedom.
“It is not the same thing to say you aren't human and to say you are inhuman... if I affirm a non-predicate... you are inhuman, it means non-humanity, an excess over humanity but an excess which is inherent to humanity itself.”
In Allen's Tolstoy parody Love and Death, Dostoevsky is absent, so all of Dostoevsky's titles (The Idiot, Karamazov Brothers, Crime and Punishment, The Gambler, The Double, etc.) erupt in one scene as a return of the repressed, illustrating that one cannot coincide with itself and multiplicity explodes as a secondary effect of pure difference.
“Where is Dostoevsky?... There is no Dostoevsky, so what happens in the movie as a kind of a return of the repressed is that in one wonderful short scene... all the big titles of Dostoevsky novels emerge.”
He turns the politically-correct idea of 'alternative modernities' against itself by naming fascism as the first big project of an alternate modernity, industrial modernisation without alienation or social disintegration.
“Fascism was precisely the first big attempt to build an alternate modernity... to have the process of modernity, industrial development and so on, but without paying the price of alienation, social disintegration.”
Works invoked 12
The Idiot (novel) book
Dostoevsky novel whose title appears in the Love and Death return-of-the-repressed scene.
Dostoevsky novel referenced in the Love and Death scene as part of the erupting titles.
Love and Death film
Woody Allen's early Tolstoy parody; the scene where all Dostoevsky titles erupt is used to illustrate pure difference, the one not coinciding with itself, and multiplicity as secondary effect.
Dostoevsky novel referenced in the Love and Death scene ('he went underground').
Crime and Punishment book
Dostoevsky novel referenced in the Love and Death scene.
The Double book
Dostoevsky novel referenced in the Love and Death scene ('you know he could be your double').
The Gambler book
Dostoevsky novel referenced in the Love and Death scene.
Dostoevsky novel referenced in the Love and Death scene ('he acted insulted and injured').
Dostoevsky novel referenced in the Love and Death scene ('he must have been possessed').
The Raw Youth book
Dostoevsky novel referenced in the Love and Death scene ('he was a raw youth').
The category of the undead from King is used to illustrate the structure of inhuman freedom, alive precisely as dead, an excess inherent to life.
Praised as the greatest spiritual director, but deployed as the foil for today's idealism: the obsession with the inertia and decay of matter is exactly the spiritual materialism his formal materialism opposes.
People invoked 12
Frankfurt School positive
Named alongside class struggle as one of the names for the antagonistic potential inherent in the project of modernity (dialectic of Enlightenment).
Jacques Lacan positive
Cited on the left/right void, on sexual difference as the sexual within, and on the binary signifier primordially repressed whose missing counterpoint generates multiplicity.
Gilles Deleuze negative
Singled out for critique: his assertion of primordial multiplicity as the ultimate ontological fact is rejected from the radical-materialist perspective.
Woody Allen positive
His early film Love and Death is used as an example of pure difference and return of the repressed (the absent Dostoevsky).
Stephen King positive
His horror category of the undead is used to model the structure of inhuman freedom ('alive precisely as dead').
Woody Allen's Love and Death is described as a parody of Tolstoy, whose topic structures the film and whose absent counterpart (Dostoevsky) returns.
Jürgen Habermas negative
His framing of current pathologies as 'modernity as an unfinished project' is rejected in favour of seeing them as part of the very project of modernity.
Andrei Tarkovsky negative
Called the greatest arguably spiritual director, but his obsession with the inertia and density of matter is used as the example of today's idealism/spiritual materialism.
Karl Marx positive
Invokes being Marxist and turning the anti-Semitic story around so that class struggle comes first.
Sigmund Freud positive
Drawn on alongside Kant and Lacan for the conclusion that symbolic prohibition regulates the inhuman excess, not nature directly.
Immanuel Kant positive
Cited for the early distinction between negative and indefinite judgment, used to argue human freedom is an inhuman excess inherent to humanity.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky positive
His absent presence in Love and Death is the example: his novel titles erupt as a return of the repressed, illustrating pure difference and multiplicity as secondary effect.
What it argues
Anti-Semitism as projection of immanent social antagonismCritique of 'alternative modernity' and historicist nominalismFascism as the first project of alternate modernityUniversal antagonism vs. particular modernities (dialectical reversal)Pure difference prior to its termsFormal materialism against spiritual materialismThe inhuman excess inherent to humanity (Kant's indefinite judgment)
Dialectical moves 8
“It's not that there is disorder, antagonism, disintegration, class struggle because of the Jews. Class struggle, or more generally social antagonism, comes first.”
Reverses the anti-Semitic causal story: the external intruder (the Jew) is a projection that explains an antagonism already immanent to social space.
“It's not that struggle is at the level of the particular content, while universal is just some kind of neutral empty container... No, the site of the struggle is universal antagonism itself.”
Inverts the usual universal/particular relation: the universal is not a neutral container but the very site of antagonism, and particulars are reactions to it.
“Particular species of modernity are not just examples of their universal genus... they are in a way reactions to it. They fight it.”
The universal is not exemplified by particulars but fought by them: existing modernities are cover-ups of the universal deadlock.
“It's a difference, but a pure difference... a difference which is paradoxically prior to what it is the difference between.”
Difference is not derived from two pre-given terms; the two positive terms appear afterwards as attempts to dominate the tension of a prior difference.
“Today it is rather idealism which is materialist.”
Reverses the materialism/idealism opposition: today's spiritualism clings to the inertia and density of matter, while radical materialism is a pure formalism.
“If I say you are undead, it means you are the living dead. You are alive precisely as dead.”
The undead models the structure of inhuman freedom: an excess that is alive only in the form of death, internal to life rather than external to it.
“Not inhuman as external to humanity but a monstrous excess of some radical wild freedom which is inherent to humanity itself.”
The inhuman is not outside humanity (animal/divine) but an excess internal to it, freedom is humanity's ex-timate kernel.
“What cultural symbolic prohibition tries to regulate... is not directly nature, natural instincts, but is this zero level inhuman excess.”
Reverses the nature/culture story: culture does not repress nature but the inhuman excess that is neither nature nor culture.
Claims 20
asserts
Class struggle, or social antagonism generally, comes first; the figure of the Jew is a projection invented to account for the imbalance of social space.the structure of anti-Semitism
asserts
In its fascist version, anti-Semitism casts the Jew as an external trauma that brutally intrudes and disturbs an otherwise harmonious social balance.fascist anti-Semitism's framing of the Jew
rejects
The notion of 'alternative modernity' (politically correct post-colonialism) should be critically rejected as historicist nominalism.alternative / alternate modernity
asserts
Fascism was the first big attempt to build an alternate modernity — industrial development without the price of alienation and social disintegration.fascism as alternate modernity
asserts
There is an antagonistic potential inherent to the very universal project of capitalist modernity.antagonism inherent to modernity
reframes
Wars, concentration camps, new fundamentalism are not a regression or a sign that modernity is unfinished, but part of the very project of modernity.Habermas's 'modernity as unfinished project'
asserts
Reducing the antagonistic aspects of modernity to one particular form of modernity is deeply ideological because it saves the unblemished general notion of modernity.historicist nominalism about modernity
reframes
Particular really-existing modernities are not exemplifications of a universal genus but reactions to the deadlock/antagonism named by modernity as a universal.the relation of universal and particular modernity
reframes
The site of the struggle is universal antagonism itself, not particular contents within a neutral universal container.the locus of political struggle
asserts
There is no neutral way to define the difference between left and right; it is a void approachable only from one side or the other.the left/right distinction
asserts
For a traditional right-winger, society is an organic harmonious unity and left radicals are external intruders; the idea of antagonism inscribed in the social edifice is anathema to them.the right-wing worldview
asserts
Sexual difference is not a difference between two species of humanity but is the sexual within each perspective, appearing differently from the male and the feminine point of view.sexual difference (via Lacan)
rejects
Radical materialism should be critical of Deleuze's assertion of a primordial multiplicity as the ultimate ontological fact.Deleuze's primordial multiplicity
asserts
Multiplicity is an effect of the inconsistency of the one with itself — of the fact that the one cannot coincide with itself.the origin of multiplicity
asserts
The primordial fact is pure self-difference, not any mythological polar opposites like masculine/feminine, light/darkness, yin/yang.the starting point of radical materialism
reframes
Today it is idealism that is materialist, clinging to the density, inertia and earthy stuff of matter (as in Tarkovsky), while radical materialism is a pure formalism.materialism vs idealism today
asserts
Quantum physics is ultimately a deeply materialist theory, where no positivity of matter is needed and everything is done with purely formal oscillations.quantum physics as materialism
asserts
It is not the same to say 'you aren't human' (external to humanity) and 'you are inhuman' (a non-humanity that is an excess inherent to humanity itself).Kant's negative vs indefinite judgment
asserts
Human freedom has the status of the undead — neither nature (animals are enslaved to instinct) nor culture (symbolic regulation), but an inhuman excess inherent to humanity.the status of human freedom
reframes
What cultural symbolic prohibition tries to master is not directly natural instinct but the zero-level inhuman excess, the ex-timate kernel of humanity.the target of symbolic prohibition
Quotes 15
“It's not that there is disorder, antagonism, disintegration, class struggle because of the Jews. Class struggle, or more generally social antagonism, comes first.”Slavoj Žižek · anti-Semitism as projection of immanent antagonism
“Social space is in itself already curved, imbalanced. And in order to imaginary, in an imaginary way, account for it, we invent the figure of the Jew.”Slavoj Žižek · the Jew as imaginary projection
“Fascism was precisely the first big attempt to build an alternate modernity.”Slavoj Žižek · fascism as alternate modernity
“There is an antagonism inherent to the very universal notion of modernity.”Slavoj Žižek · antagonism inherent to universal modernity
“The site of the struggle is universal antagonism itself, and all particular actually existing modernisms are attempts to cover up, resolve this problem.”Slavoj Žižek · universality as the site of antagonism
“It's a difference which is paradoxically prior to what it is the difference between.”Slavoj Žižek · pure difference prior to its terms
“There is a pure difference, that there is a crack, an antagonism in within the order of the one.”Slavoj Žižek · the crack within the one
“The primordial fact is pure self-difference.”Slavoj Žižek · self-difference as primordial
“There is no neutral way to define the difference between left and right. In itself it's a void.”Slavoj Žižek · left/right as a void
“Today it is rather idealism which is materialist.”Slavoj Žižek · reversal of materialism and idealism
“One cannot coincide with itself, pure difference. Because of this pure difference, as a secondary effect, the multiplicity explodes.”Slavoj Žižek · multiplicity as effect of pure difference
“The greatest arguably spiritual movie director, the Russian Tarkovsky, was at the same time practically obsessed by the topic of inertia of matter, density of matter, matter in decay.”Slavoj Žižek · Tarkovsky and the inertia of matter
“You are alive precisely as dead.”Slavoj Žižek · the structure of the undead
“The ex-timate kernel of humanity, the inhuman dimension in exactly the same sense in which we talk about the undead.”Slavoj Žižek · ex-timate inhuman kernel
“Not inhuman as external to humanity but a monstrous excess of some radical wild freedom which is inherent to humanity itself.”Slavoj Žižek · freedom as inhuman excess inherent to humanity
Transcript 10 turns
unknown
Sieg
Sieg
Slavoj Žižek
Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Let's just recall how anti-Semitism functions. In its fascist version, anti-Semitism, or rather the figure of the Jew, the Jewish plot, is precisely an external trauma which brutally intrudes, disturbing social balance, curving as it were the social space. Society was supposed to be harmonious, balanced, then Jews intervened, distorted its as it were natural order. But of course, here at least we should be Marxist and turn things around. It's not that there is disorder, antagonism, disintegration, class struggle because of the Jews. Class struggle, or more generally social antagonism, comes first. That is to say social space is in itself already curved, imbalanced. And in order to imaginary, in an imaginary way, account for it, we invent the figure of the Jew. That is to say we project the cause of it into the figure of the Jew. Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Even at a more fundamental level of today's economic constellation, I think that this notion of real as virtual can help us to critically reject a category which is more and more popular with politically correct post-colonial authors, the notion of so-called alternate or alternative modernity. The idea is to put it simply the following one: of course there are inconsistencies, antagonisms, repressive potentials in the notion of modernity, which ultimately means of course capitalism as the force of modernity. But so the story goes, these antagonistic repressive elements are not part of the very concept of modernity but are only limited to the Anglo-Saxon West European model of modernization. Why then should there not be other alternate modernities where you can have modernization but without these alienating effects which characterize Western European process of modernization, without socially disruptive processes, without alienation, without exploitation, without ecological catastrophes and so on and so on? And then of course it's free for grab. Anybody can have his or her own modernity. You can say we can have then Latin American modernity as alternate modernity, we can have African modernity, we can have Asian modernity, whatever. So what is the problem with this approach, which is basically an approach of historicist nominalism? Because the underlying logic is that in famous pseudo-deconstructionist logic of: there is no modernity as such, there are only particular modernities like West European, African, Latin American and so on and so on. Of course this is true. The problem is elsewhere. The problem is that through this nominalist reduction, again by claiming that only particular modernities effectively exist, the site of antagonism is reduced to only one particular modernity. It is no longer modernity as such which is characterized by antagonism, imbalance. Imbalance is dismissed as just pertaining to a certain species, particular species of modernity. And what is problematic with this, well, to put it very simply, did we not have already in the early 20th century, in the first part of the 20th century, one big well-known project of alternate modernity? It was called fascism. Fascism was precisely the first big attempt to build an alternate modernity. That is to say to have the process of modernity, industrial development and so on, but without paying the price of alienation, social disintegration and so on and so on. What should we then oppose to this model? We should oppose to it the idea that some antagonism, we can call it by different names: Marxists would have called it class struggle, Frankfurt School would have called it dialectic of Enlightenment. But the idea being that there is some antagonistic potential in the very project of capitalist modernity. That is to say that all these phenomena that we deplore: wars, violences, concentration camps, new fundamentalism, you name it, that all this is not simply a regression or as Habermas would have put it, a sign of modernity as an unfinished project, but is part of the very project of modernity. This is what gets lost. Which is why I think that although it wants to be historicist, critical, this idea of reducing the antagonistic aspects of modernity to just one particular form of modernity is deeply ideological because it saves unblemished the general notion of modernity. What we should insist on is on the contrary as I've just said that there is an antagonism inherent to the very universal notion of modernity. And now I'm coming to my point: so that the particular species of modernity are not just examples or exemplifications of their universal genus, of their universal notion, but they are in a way reactions to it. They fight it. Modernity as a universal notion names a certain deadlock, a certain antagonism, and particular really existing forms of modernity are attempts to resolve this deadlock, to solve the problem. Liberal capitalism as one form of modernity wants to solve the deadlock of modernity in a certain way through market freedoms and so on. Fascist modernization in a different way, Latin American modernization in a different way. So what's properly dialectical here? It's again this very reversal of the usual constellation. It's not that struggle is at the level of the particular content, while universal is just some kind of neutral empty container, so that universal means some encompassing global notion and then within this notion particular forms struggle like fascist modernization against liberal modernization and so on and so on. No, the site of the struggle is universal antagonism itself, and all particular actually existing modernisms are attempts to cover up, resolve this problem. So again we should remember this, that the site of antagonism is universality. There is no modernity as such, there only is Anglo-Saxon, Latin American, African and so on, fascist modernity. But in order to grasp the very dynamic of these particular forms, one has to refer them to this their absent cause, to the big antagonism to which they react. It's, if we may put it in these terms, it's a difference, but a pure difference. A pure difference in the sense that it's a difference which is paradoxically prior to what it is the difference between. So it's not that we have two terms and there is a difference between the two terms. Paradoxically, the two positive terms appear afterwards as attempts to dominate, cover up the tension and so on of this difference. Again, how can this be? Another simple example just to illustrate this logic. The political distinction, I know it's half forgotten today, nobody wants to hear about it, but nonetheless, the distinction between left and right. The first thing that strikes the eye about this distinction if we take it seriously is that it's not just a distinction within a certain social space. It's not that in a certain society if you take into account all political forces we can say: these are right-wing forces, these are left-wing forces, and then all the intermediate phenomena in between: center, center-left, center-right, whatever you want. It's different. It is that if you ask a right-winger how is the entire social field structured, you will get a totally different answer than if you ask a left-winger or for that matter if you ask a centrist. To simplify it: a right-winger will tell you that society is an organic harmonious unity, at least the traditional right-winger, and that left radicals are external intruders. What is anathema for a radical conservative is the idea that there is an antagonism, an imbalance inscribed into the very heart of the social edifice. For a left-winger, the struggle is admitted as central. So again, the point is that there is no neutral way to define the difference between left and right. In itself it's a void. It's just that you can approach it either from the leftist or from the rightist point of view. And incidentally for Lacan it's exactly in the same way that also a sexual difference functions. Maybe a diagram will help. Here's the penis and the scrotum that holds the testicles or testes inside. Sexual difference is not a difference between the two species of humanity in general, but it's the sexual within, from the male perspective, sexual difference itself appears in a different way than from the feminine perspective. So again difference paradoxically comes first. Well, I mean, sometimes the penis gets hard without, well, oh without an ejaculation of sperm. Oh yes, that's right. Crucial philosophically is this, let's call it pure formalism. And against the reproach that we are dealing here with some kind of idealism—isn't matter in its positive inert presence primordial? I think that we should reject this reproach and precisely insist on this notion of, how should I call it, purely formal materialism. Materialism as materialism of the difference. The minimal feature of materialism being that there is a pure difference, that there is a crack, an antagonism in within the order of the one. That the primordial fact is pure self-difference. I'm very precise here: self-difference and not any kind of this mythological polar opposites: feminine, masculine; light, darkness; yin, yang and so on. I think that here radical materialism should be even critical towards Deleuze, Gilles Deleuze, who likes to assert some kind of primordial multiplicity as the ultimate ontological fact. From the radical perspective that I am advocating, multiplicity
Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Let's just recall how anti-Semitism functions. In its fascist version, anti-Semitism, or rather the figure of the Jew, the Jewish plot, is precisely an external trauma which brutally intrudes, disturbing social balance, curving as it were the social space. Society was supposed to be harmonious, balanced, then Jews intervened, distorted its as it were natural order. But of course, here at least we should be Marxist and turn things around. It's not that there is disorder, antagonism, disintegration, class struggle because of the Jews. Class struggle, or more generally social antagonism, comes first. That is to say social space is in itself already curved, imbalanced. And in order to imaginary, in an imaginary way, account for it, we invent the figure of the Jew. That is to say we project the cause of it into the figure of the Jew. Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Even at a more fundamental level of today's economic constellation, I think that this notion of real as virtual can help us to critically reject a category which is more and more popular with politically correct post-colonial authors, the notion of so-called alternate or alternative modernity. The idea is to put it simply the following one: of course there are inconsistencies, antagonisms, repressive potentials in the notion of modernity, which ultimately means of course capitalism as the force of modernity. But so the story goes, these antagonistic repressive elements are not part of the very concept of modernity but are only limited to the Anglo-Saxon West European model of modernization. Why then should there not be other alternate modernities where you can have modernization but without these alienating effects which characterize Western European process of modernization, without socially disruptive processes, without alienation, without exploitation, without ecological catastrophes and so on and so on? And then of course it's free for grab. Anybody can have his or her own modernity. You can say we can have then Latin American modernity as alternate modernity, we can have African modernity, we can have Asian modernity, whatever. So what is the problem with this approach, which is basically an approach of historicist nominalism? Because the underlying logic is that in famous pseudo-deconstructionist logic of: there is no modernity as such, there are only particular modernities like West European, African, Latin American and so on and so on. Of course this is true. The problem is elsewhere. The problem is that through this nominalist reduction, again by claiming that only particular modernities effectively exist, the site of antagonism is reduced to only one particular modernity. It is no longer modernity as such which is characterized by antagonism, imbalance. Imbalance is dismissed as just pertaining to a certain species, particular species of modernity. And what is problematic with this, well, to put it very simply, did we not have already in the early 20th century, in the first part of the 20th century, one big well-known project of alternate modernity? It was called fascism. Fascism was precisely the first big attempt to build an alternate modernity. That is to say to have the process of modernity, industrial development and so on, but without paying the price of alienation, social disintegration and so on and so on. What should we then oppose to this model? We should oppose to it the idea that some antagonism, we can call it by different names: Marxists would have called it class struggle, Frankfurt School would have called it dialectic of Enlightenment. But the idea being that there is some antagonistic potential in the very project of capitalist modernity. That is to say that all these phenomena that we deplore: wars, violences, concentration camps, new fundamentalism, you name it, that all this is not simply a regression or as Habermas would have put it, a sign of modernity as an unfinished project, but is part of the very project of modernity. This is what gets lost. Which is why I think that although it wants to be historicist, critical, this idea of reducing the antagonistic aspects of modernity to just one particular form of modernity is deeply ideological because it saves unblemished the general notion of modernity. What we should insist on is on the contrary as I've just said that there is an antagonism inherent to the very universal notion of modernity. And now I'm coming to my point: so that the particular species of modernity are not just examples or exemplifications of their universal genus, of their universal notion, but they are in a way reactions to it. They fight it. Modernity as a universal notion names a certain deadlock, a certain antagonism, and particular really existing forms of modernity are attempts to resolve this deadlock, to solve the problem. Liberal capitalism as one form of modernity wants to solve the deadlock of modernity in a certain way through market freedoms and so on. Fascist modernization in a different way, Latin American modernization in a different way. So what's properly dialectical here? It's again this very reversal of the usual constellation. It's not that struggle is at the level of the particular content, while universal is just some kind of neutral empty container, so that universal means some encompassing global notion and then within this notion particular forms struggle like fascist modernization against liberal modernization and so on and so on. No, the site of the struggle is universal antagonism itself, and all particular actually existing modernisms are attempts to cover up, resolve this problem. So again we should remember this, that the site of antagonism is universality. There is no modernity as such, there only is Anglo-Saxon, Latin American, African and so on, fascist modernity. But in order to grasp the very dynamic of these particular forms, one has to refer them to this their absent cause, to the big antagonism to which they react. It's, if we may put it in these terms, it's a difference, but a pure difference. A pure difference in the sense that it's a difference which is paradoxically prior to what it is the difference between. So it's not that we have two terms and there is a difference between the two terms. Paradoxically, the two positive terms appear afterwards as attempts to dominate, cover up the tension and so on of this difference. Again, how can this be? Another simple example just to illustrate this logic. The political distinction, I know it's half forgotten today, nobody wants to hear about it, but nonetheless, the distinction between left and right. The first thing that strikes the eye about this distinction if we take it seriously is that it's not just a distinction within a certain social space. It's not that in a certain society if you take into account all political forces we can say: these are right-wing forces, these are left-wing forces, and then all the intermediate phenomena in between: center, center-left, center-right, whatever you want. It's different. It is that if you ask a right-winger how is the entire social field structured, you will get a totally different answer than if you ask a left-winger or for that matter if you ask a centrist. To simplify it: a right-winger will tell you that society is an organic harmonious unity, at least the traditional right-winger, and that left radicals are external intruders. What is anathema for a radical conservative is the idea that there is an antagonism, an imbalance inscribed into the very heart of the social edifice. For a left-winger, the struggle is admitted as central. So again, the point is that there is no neutral way to define the difference between left and right. In itself it's a void. It's just that you can approach it either from the leftist or from the rightist point of view. And incidentally for Lacan it's exactly in the same way that also a sexual difference functions. Maybe a diagram will help. Here's the penis and the scrotum that holds the testicles or testes inside. Sexual difference is not a difference between the two species of humanity in general, but it's the sexual within, from the male perspective, sexual difference itself appears in a different way than from the feminine perspective. So again difference paradoxically comes first. Well, I mean, sometimes the penis gets hard without, well, oh without an ejaculation of sperm. Oh yes, that's right. Crucial philosophically is this, let's call it pure formalism. And against the reproach that we are dealing here with some kind of idealism—isn't matter in its positive inert presence primordial? I think that we should reject this reproach and precisely insist on this notion of, how should I call it, purely formal materialism. Materialism as materialism of the difference. The minimal feature of materialism being that there is a pure difference, that there is a crack, an antagonism in within the order of the one. That the primordial fact is pure self-difference. I'm very precise here: self-difference and not any kind of this mythological polar opposites: feminine, masculine; light, darkness; yin, yang and so on. I think that here radical materialism should be even critical towards Deleuze, Gilles Deleuze, who likes to assert some kind of primordial multiplicity as the ultimate ontological fact. From the radical perspective that I am advocating, multiplicity
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already is an effect of the inconsistency of the one with itself, of the fact that the one cannot coincide with
already is an effect of the inconsistency of the one with itself, of the fact that the one cannot coincide with
Slavoj Žižek
itself. Or to put it in a slightly different way: we do not have some primordial polarity like masculine, feminine; light, darkness; and then we can play all these new age agnostic games of how in our era we put too much accent on one pole and we have to reestablish the balance like we are too rational masculine, let's put
itself. Or to put it in a slightly different way: we do not have some primordial polarity like masculine, feminine; light, darkness; and then we can play all these new age agnostic games of how in our era we put too much accent on one pole and we have to reestablish the balance like we are too rational masculine, let's put
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more accent on the feminine emotional side, whatever.
more accent on the feminine emotional side, whatever.
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No, it's more radical. It's as if as Lacan puts it, the binary signifier is primordially
No, it's more radical. It's as if as Lacan puts it, the binary signifier is primordially
Slavoj Žižek
repressed, which means the second element is always missing. And this lack of the counterpoint—we have one but we don't have the accompanying other—and this original imbalance then sets in motion the generation of multiplicity. Extremely simple example from one of the early movies by Woody Allen, I think it's Love and Death, a kind of a parody on Tolstoy, where again the whole movie topic focuses on topic of Tolstoy. So of course our first enigma is here: where is Dostoevsky? The other natural supplement to Tolstoy. There is no Dostoevsky, so what happens in the movie as a kind of a return of the repressed is that in one wonderful short scene, when two main characters talk with each other, all the big titles of Dostoevsky novels emerge: like, 'Do you know what happened with that idiot?' 'Ah, you mean the one of the Karamazov Brothers?' 'Yes, he did his crime, it was punished, then he went underground, turned into a gambler,' and so on and so on. He heard it from one of the Karamazov brothers. Oh, he must have been possessed. Well, he was a raw youth. Raw youth? He was an idiot. And he acted insulted and injured. Well, I hear he was a gambler. You know he could be your double. Oh, really, how novel. The lesson of this is ontological lesson: one cannot coincide with itself, pure difference. Because of this pure difference, as a secondary effect, the multiplicity explodes. So again against the usual reproach 'is this not idealism', I would say that today it is rather idealism which is materialist. Today's opposition, I am tempted to claim, between materialism and idealism is that today's idealism, or rather spiritualism, clings to this famous density, inertia of experience, of nature, of earth, of the stuff. No wonder that the greatest arguably spiritual movie director, the Russian Tarkovsky, was at the same time practically obsessed by the topic of inertia of matter, density of matter, matter in decay. In his films, when heroes are praying, they don't pray looking upwards. They pray by sometimes literally immersing their heads into mud, close contact with earth. So I think the thing to do today is to oppose to this kind of spiritual materialism the pure formalism of true radical materialism. Which is why for me quantum physics is ultimately a deeply materialist theory, where you don't need any positivity of matter. You can do everything with purely formal oscillations and so on. So again back to
repressed, which means the second element is always missing. And this lack of the counterpoint—we have one but we don't have the accompanying other—and this original imbalance then sets in motion the generation of multiplicity. Extremely simple example from one of the early movies by Woody Allen, I think it's Love and Death, a kind of a parody on Tolstoy, where again the whole movie topic focuses on topic of Tolstoy. So of course our first enigma is here: where is Dostoevsky? The other natural supplement to Tolstoy. There is no Dostoevsky, so what happens in the movie as a kind of a return of the repressed is that in one wonderful short scene, when two main characters talk with each other, all the big titles of Dostoevsky novels emerge: like, 'Do you know what happened with that idiot?' 'Ah, you mean the one of the Karamazov Brothers?' 'Yes, he did his crime, it was punished, then he went underground, turned into a gambler,' and so on and so on. He heard it from one of the Karamazov brothers. Oh, he must have been possessed. Well, he was a raw youth. Raw youth? He was an idiot. And he acted insulted and injured. Well, I hear he was a gambler. You know he could be your double. Oh, really, how novel. The lesson of this is ontological lesson: one cannot coincide with itself, pure difference. Because of this pure difference, as a secondary effect, the multiplicity explodes. So again against the usual reproach 'is this not idealism', I would say that today it is rather idealism which is materialist. Today's opposition, I am tempted to claim, between materialism and idealism is that today's idealism, or rather spiritualism, clings to this famous density, inertia of experience, of nature, of earth, of the stuff. No wonder that the greatest arguably spiritual movie director, the Russian Tarkovsky, was at the same time practically obsessed by the topic of inertia of matter, density of matter, matter in decay. In his films, when heroes are praying, they don't pray looking upwards. They pray by sometimes literally immersing their heads into mud, close contact with earth. So I think the thing to do today is to oppose to this kind of spiritual materialism the pure formalism of true radical materialism. Which is why for me quantum physics is ultimately a deeply materialist theory, where you don't need any positivity of matter. You can do everything with purely formal oscillations and so on. So again back to
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this central insight, that difference comes first. Difference: how to think a difference which is prior to the elements it is the difference of. Well, that's it for today, fellas. Let's get out to
this central insight, that difference comes first. Difference: how to think a difference which is prior to the elements it is the difference of. Well, that's it for today, fellas. Let's get out to
Slavoj Žižek
practice, huh? Here's a cross-section of the vagina. The erect penis enters here and rhythmic movements, a pumping back and forth, causes an ejaculation from the penis. Immanuel Kant in his already in his early writings introduces here a crucial distinction. A very strange but clear distinction, a distinction between a negative judgment and indefinite judgment. That is to say, as Kant puts it, it is not the same thing to say you aren't human and to say you are inhuman. If I say you aren't human, it simply means you are external to humanity. You are animal, divine, whatever, it's outside. But if I say no, if I as Kant puts it, if I do not simply negate a predicate but if I affirm a non-predicate, so again if I don't say simply you aren't human but if I say you are inhuman, it means non-humanity, an excess over humanity but an excess which is inherent to humanity itself. To give you another example which will make it clear: let's just think about Stephen King horror novels, the well-known category of the undead. We can feel the difference if I say you aren't dead, it's not the same as saying you are undead. If I say you aren't dead, it simply means you are alive and nothing more, nothing mysterious. But as every reader of horror novels knows, if I say you are undead, it means you are the living dead. You are alive precisely as dead. Immanuel Kant's point is that human freedom has exactly such a status. It's something which is neither nature—animals are not free, they are enslaved to their instincts—nor culture. Culture is already symbolic law, symbolic regulation. But the conclusion to be drawn from Kant and consequently from Freud and Lacan is that what cultural symbolic prohibition try to regulate, to master, to dominate, to domesticate, whatever you want, is not directly nature, natural instincts, but is this zero level inhuman excess, to use Lacan's term, the ex-timate kernel of humanity, the inhuman dimension in exactly the same sense in which we talk about the undead. Not inhuman as external to humanity but a monstrous excess of some radical wild freedom which is inherent to humanity itself. So again we have this paradox that the difference between nature and culture is a level of its own, is neither nature nor culture,
practice, huh? Here's a cross-section of the vagina. The erect penis enters here and rhythmic movements, a pumping back and forth, causes an ejaculation from the penis. Immanuel Kant in his already in his early writings introduces here a crucial distinction. A very strange but clear distinction, a distinction between a negative judgment and indefinite judgment. That is to say, as Kant puts it, it is not the same thing to say you aren't human and to say you are inhuman. If I say you aren't human, it simply means you are external to humanity. You are animal, divine, whatever, it's outside. But if I say no, if I as Kant puts it, if I do not simply negate a predicate but if I affirm a non-predicate, so again if I don't say simply you aren't human but if I say you are inhuman, it means non-humanity, an excess over humanity but an excess which is inherent to humanity itself. To give you another example which will make it clear: let's just think about Stephen King horror novels, the well-known category of the undead. We can feel the difference if I say you aren't dead, it's not the same as saying you are undead. If I say you aren't dead, it simply means you are alive and nothing more, nothing mysterious. But as every reader of horror novels knows, if I say you are undead, it means you are the living dead. You are alive precisely as dead. Immanuel Kant's point is that human freedom has exactly such a status. It's something which is neither nature—animals are not free, they are enslaved to their instincts—nor culture. Culture is already symbolic law, symbolic regulation. But the conclusion to be drawn from Kant and consequently from Freud and Lacan is that what cultural symbolic prohibition try to regulate, to master, to dominate, to domesticate, whatever you want, is not directly nature, natural instincts, but is this zero level inhuman excess, to use Lacan's term, the ex-timate kernel of humanity, the inhuman dimension in exactly the same sense in which we talk about the undead. Not inhuman as external to humanity but a monstrous excess of some radical wild freedom which is inherent to humanity itself. So again we have this paradox that the difference between nature and culture is a level of its own, is neither nature nor culture,
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it's some kind of crazy excess.
it's some kind of crazy excess.