Slavoj Žižek Masterclass: Jacques Lacan: A Lateral Introduction. Part 9 (Q & A)
Lecture · Justin Wagner ·
published 2018-11-29 · 1:59:32 · 17,981 words
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ideologyphilosophy-generalliberalism-political-correctnesscinema-art-culturegeopolitics-warpsychoanalysissubjectivitycapitalismhegel-dialecticsethicspolitics
Žižek addresses the expectation that intellectuals must provide political programs, arguing instead that philosophy’s role is to critique the demand itself. He contrasts this with postmodern critiques of the traditional intellectual, citing Richard Rorty as a clear example of liberal ideology. He illustrates how theoretical enemies like Habermas and Derrida reconcile when facing political urgency, such as the Iraq War, revealing a deep underlying consensus among liberals. Žižek argues that philosophical and political positions matter by analyzing the 'dictatorial' nature of defining the field of struggle itself, using the Habermas-Derrida reconciliation and the analytical/continental divide as examples. He critiques the 'linguistic turn' for ignoring language's capacity for neutral designation and proposes a 'fast diagnostic' method to expose false problems, such as Sam Harris's views on democracy. Finally, he interprets Shakespeare's triad of the madman, lover, and poet to distinguish between misperception, immanent idealization, and the creation of something from nothing, concluding with a personal identification as a 'madman' regarding the dangers of the 'poetic-military complex' in Yugoslavia. Žižek responds to a question about the ethics of psychoanalysis, arguing that its current decline is ideologically inevitable and that its 'failure' is actually its success, as it exposes the superego's injunction to enjoy. He engages in a dialectical exchange with an audience member regarding Foucault’s Panopticon, asserting that the mechanism’s power lies in its phantasmatic, uncertain gaze rather than actual surveillance. The dialogue extends to epistemological debates on immanent critique, presuppositions, and the nature of philosophical disagreement, invoking Freud, Lacan, Bentham, and Foucault. Žižek addresses a student's question regarding the application of psychoanalytic categories to social phenomena, arguing that social ideology must be experienced as objective fact by subjects to function. He then tackles a complex comparison between Lacan’s ethics of desire and Badiou’s ethics of truth, arguing that Lacan’s later shift from desire to drive resolves the apparent conflict by repositioning love as access to the Real rather than an imaginary illusion. Žižek engages in a dialectical dialogue with Alain Badiou, arguing that the Lacanian 'Real' in capitalism is not a fixed matrix but a site of radical antagonism, meaning effective political intervention must occur from 'inside' the system rather than from an external position. He illustrates this with the historical case of Tito’s Yugoslavia and critiques the notion of a pure 'outside' to capitalism, including ecological catastrophes. The conversation then shifts to the relationship between ethics and politics, where Žižek defends the 'political suspension of the ethical' as an ethical act, using the example of the Hague tribunal and his support for Serbia in a football match to demonstrate how ethical norms can be politicized. Žižek analyzes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, arguing for a nuanced engagement strategy over simple boycotts, citing his own participation in a Tel Aviv film festival and proposing a 'mega-march' for Jerusalem. He then addresses the concept of 'nomadism,' distinguishing between its ideological use to cover class distinctions and its radical philosophical potential, before concluding with an optimistic view on the contemporary role of intellectuals in shaping political reality.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 43
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
The act of stepping back to analyze the presuppositions of a situation (like the demand for a political program) rather than participating in the immediate political debate.
A group Žižek references as having developed a theory that intellectuals should abandon the role of providing guidelines or totalizing narratives.
A situation (like war) that causes theoretical differences to disappear, revealing a hidden consensus among opponents.
A position within the leftist establishment that is more radical than social democracy but avoids perceived totalitarian dangers, which Žižek explicitly rejects.
The Hegelian lesson that each particular element has its own universality, meaning the struggle is never just between particulars within a shared universal, but a struggle for what constitutes universality itself.
A Lacanian concept used to explain how every discourse has a moment of closure or a 'dictatorial element' that imposes a universal frame, preventing infinite relativism.
as “linguistic turn”
The commonplace emphasis that language is embedded in a life-world practice, which Žižek critiques for ignoring the 'miracle' of language as a neutral medium for conceptual ideal content.
Žižek's method of focusing on a ridiculous or elementary detail to gain a profound philosophical insight, resembling Adorno's use of paradoxical formulas.
The Lacanian-Hegelian conclusion of the poet's function: making things visible against the background of a void/nothingness, rather than idealizing them.
A coinage describing the danger in ex-Yugoslavia where poetic/cultural narratives directly prepared and justified political crimes, more feared than the industrial-military complex.
The idea that psychoanalytic theory explains why psychoanalysis must fail in a neurotic society, making its decline a sign of its theoretical correctness.
When someone claims to hold a consistent political/philosophical position, the Freudian response is 'No, you don't have it,' implying the subject is unconscious of their true stance.
The modern social command to 'realize yourself' or 'enjoy,' which paradoxically blocks access to enjoyment, creating a pathological deadlock.
as “immanent fantasy”
Fantasy is not just a subjective illusion but is 'out there' in the social structure and power relations, serving as a formal matrix.
The mechanism of the Panopticon works not through actual surveillance, but through the subject's uncertainty about whether they are being watched, which is part of its efficiency.
The revelation in 1984 that Big Brother is a fiction; Žižek uses this to argue that the 'Big Other' or authority figure often does not exist, yet structures reality.
as “phenomenological retroactive logic”
Žižek’s characterization of early Lacan, suggesting the unconscious is not a pre-existing entity but is reconstructed retroactively through the act of interpretation (the futur antérieur).
The Durkheimian idea that social facts exist independently of individuals, which Žižek argues must be supplemented by the requirement that subjects experience them as such.
Lacan’s definition of psychosis: the failure to internalize the anonymous social authority ('one') as objective, resulting in the 'big Other' being experienced as a personal, paranoiac particular.
Žižek’s term for the 'mad' state in communist societies where one blindly follows official jargon; contrasted with the 'worse' madness of relating to authority without identifying with it.
A term used to describe Lacan’s formula 'do not give ground on your desire' as a unique, non-recurring event in his work, unlike his other recurring formulas.
as “logic of desire”
The structure where the primordial object (the Thing) is lost, and we only get fragmentary remainders (objet petit a) which are elevated to stand in for the lost object.
The critique of Lacan’s Ethics as a model where one enters a forbidden domain (Ate) and returns, which Žižek argues is superseded by the repetitive fidelity of drive.
as “drive enters symbolic order”
Žižek’s claim that with the shift from desire to drive, love is no longer dismissed as imaginary but becomes the very access to the Real.
Žižek’s distinction: while desire chases a lost object, the true object of drive is the loss itself (the pushing away/circulation around the void).
Žižek reinterprets the Buddhist Bodhisattva’s refusal of Nirvana as an act of 'drive', a radical desire to return to and disrupt the world, rather than a compassionate choice.
as “Singular Universality”
The shared premise between Badiou and Žižek that truth is accessed only through a partial, one-sided engagement, rejecting the relativist notion of 'partial truths'.
as “Capitalism as Worldless”
The idea that capitalism functions as a 'formal matrix' or 'worldless' condition that incorporates all symbolic universes, leaving no pure external standpoint.
A Badiouian/Rancièrian term for the proletariat/universal subject, defined as those who belong to the universal situation directly without having a specific place within it.
as “Symptomal Torsion”
Badiou’s term for the 'part of no part' (the excluded), which Žižek reinterprets not as an external pure standpoint but as a 'symptomal torsion' inherent to the system's antagonism.
The concept that the 'outside' is structurally 'inside' the system; true intervention requires occupying a position within the system's antagonism, not fleeing to an external primitive mode.
as “Logic of Non-All”
The Lacanian logical structure where the system is 'non-all', meaning it does not include everything; the 'outside' (remainders, ecology) is always already incorporated as supplementary to the system.
Reinterpreted not merely as political rule but as the 'dictatorial dimension' where the struggle is about the field of struggle itself, breaking down predefined democratic spaces.
The paradoxical claim that suspending ethical norms (e.g., for political necessity) is itself the highest ethical act, politicizing ethics rather than submitting it to extra-political laws.
The argument that the Berlin Wall's fall revealed the 'truth' of the current wall: that globalization is not liberation but the establishment of identity through exclusion.
as “objective deadlock”
The structural impossibility of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through simple humanitarian adjustments, requiring a recognition of its inherent contradictions.
The dangerous political risk of adopting the rhetoric of 'boycott' in Europe, which can easily slide into antisemitism despite leftist intentions.
A humorous/self-deprecating reference to linear, sequential time, contrasting with the non-linear or cyclical time often associated with nomadic or postmodern thought.
as “nomadism as ideological notion”
The critique that 'nomadism' functions ideologically by obscuring the crucial distinction between the privileged, voluntary mobility of intellectuals and the forced displacement of refugees.
as “late capitalism is nomadic”
The argument that the dominant subjectivity of late capitalism is not fixed identity but fluid, precarious, and constantly reinventing itself, mirroring the nomadic condition.
as “false notion of freedom”
The defense of abstract academic freedom not as true liberation, but as a necessary institutional space where real theoretical breakthroughs can occur.
as “every fascism is a sign of a failed revolution”
A Marxist motto cited to explain that fascism emerges from the failure of progressive political movements, serving as a diagnostic tool for current political crises.
A reading of Kafka's 'The Trial' suggesting that while absolute hope exists, it is structurally excluded from the current subjects, implying the need to lose standard leftist hope to access true hope.
Stories he reaches for 2
Antigone is cited as faithful not to her brother Polynices’ unique body, but to his name (the signifier), illustrating the 'pure symbolic ethics of desire' in Lacan’s Ethics seminar.
“she she always repeats how: what is she faithful in? Polynices. Not his unique but his name, his name.”
Žižek analyzes Shakespeare's distinction: the madman misperceives (bush as bear), the lover sees the sublime immanently in the real (Helen in an Egyptian brow), and the poet creates something from nothing (airy nothing to a name).
“The lunatic, the lover and the poet are of imagination all compact”
Works invoked 24
Antigone play
Used to illustrate the 'pure symbolic ethics of desire' in Lacan’s Ethics seminar, where fidelity is to the signifier (name) rather than the real.
Referenced for its discussion of settler colonialism and the symmetry between Israelis and Palestinians.
1984 book
Cited for the scene with O'Brien and Winston Smith regarding the non-existence of Big Brother.
Cited as an example of Freud's move to social theory, which Žižek sees as inherent to psychoanalysis.
Logics of Worlds book
Badiou’s work on the logic of worlds, referenced for the concept of 'world' and 'logic of worlds'.
Orthodoxy book
Cited by Chesterton for the quote about the blasphemy of feigned open-mindedness.
The Castle book
Mentioned alongside 'The Trial' as another work by Kafka, used to reference the final dialogue about hope.
Described as a 'problematic seminar of passage' containing the 'pure symbolic ethics of desire' (Antigone), which Žižek argues is superseded by the later shift to drive.
New Left Review journal
Mentioned as the publication where an interview with a relevant figure appeared.
Referenced for its articulation of the 'tarrying' with the negative and ecological hope, which Žižek now critiques.
The Trial book
Cited for its ending, where Kafka states there is 'absolute hope' but 'only not for us,' which Žižek uses to argue that losing standard leftist hope is the first step to true hope.
Cited as the source of Žižek's argument that fantasy is immanent and 'out there'.
Forgiveness film
A film by Udi Aloni screened by Žižek at a Tel Aviv festival; Žižek appreciates its thesis about the solidarity between Palestinian ghosts and Holocaust survivors, despite noting the film's quality doesn't fully live up to the idea.
Cited as the work where Foucault 'painted himself into a certain corner' of total immanence.
The End of Belief book
Sam Harris's book, cited for its argument justifying tyranny as a wall against Muslim unreason, which Žižek critiques.
Cited for the passage defining the madman, lover, and poet, which Žižek uses to elaborate his philosophical point on imagination and reality.
Mentioned as a context for the publication of 'The Black Book on Psychoanalysis' and Miller's reaction.
History of Sexuality book
Cited alongside Discipline and Punish as part of Foucault's problematic turn.
Referenced for its analysis of the Berlin Wall and the 'Iraqi Borrowed Kettle' metaphor.
Cited by the audience member as a work where Žižek imposes a frame of fantasy on power relations.
Mentioned as a reaction to the Black Book of Communism, prompting Miller's Maoist response.
Lacan’s Seminar cited to support the view that the unconscious is a feature of the clinic.
Cited by Nicholas Fearn; Žižek likes it because it is 'simplistic but a clear statement' on the position of analytical philosophy.
Pride and Prejudice book
Jane Austen's novel, which Žižek dislikes ('screw Jane Austen') but uses as an example of historical shifts in meaning (Darcy/Elizabeth roles).
People invoked 50
Émile Durkheim positive
Cited for the concept of 'objective facts' in social phenomena, which Žižek accepts but argues must be supplemented by the subjective experience of these facts.
Franz Kafka positive
Žižek offers a positive reading of Kafka's 'The Trial,' focusing on the final dialogue about 'hope not for us' to argue for a radical, lost hope.
Georges Bataille / Chesterton positive
Referenced as 'my beloved Chesterton' for the quote about the blasphemy of being 'open to other opinions' without meaning it.
Nicholas Fearn positive
Author of 'Introduction to Philosophy,' cited for the clear, simplistic statement that analytical philosophy (brain sciences) has finally matured.
Mentioned as a leftist Jew who supported the boycott, used to illustrate that even proponents of the boycott are Jews, making the topic sensitive in Europe.
Udi Aloni positive
Director of the film 'Forgiveness,' which Žižek screened conditionally at a Tel Aviv festival, appreciating its thesis about the solidarity between Palestinian ghosts and Holocaust survivors.
Mentioned as the interlocutor who asked the questions about capitalism and ethics.
Used as an example of a liberal intellectual who had 'hatred' for Habermas theoretically but reconciled during the Iraq War.
Antigone positive
Used as the prime example of 'pure symbolic ethics of desire' in Lacan’s Ethics seminar, faithful to the signifier (name) rather than the real.
Cited as a foil to Rorty; described as the 'madman' of capitalism who puts its views clearly.
Referenced regarding his action of throwing philosophers off a 'philosophy steamer,' which Žižek jokingly compares to his own stance on 'mad poets.'
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Cited for his irony: writing against fetishization but practicing it through paradoxical formulas; Žižek claims to resemble Adorno at his worst by using 'fast diagnostics.'
Jacques Lacan positive
Cited for the concept of the 'master signifier' and the theory that love is not idealization but accepting the reality of the beloved while seeing the sublime dimension.
G. K. Chesterton positive
Cited for the idea that ordinary policemen look for criminals, whereas in the Yugoslav case, they were reading sonnets where the crime was prepared.
Gilles Deleuze positive
Cited for the view that philosophy is a fight/clash, not a dialogue, and that true philosophers avoid debate.
Francis Fukuyama positive
Described as 'some of our friends' among the neocons, used to illustrate that intellectuals (even opposing ones) currently influence power structures like Bush's administration.
Edward Said positive
Žižek aligns with Said's suggestion to engage directly ('go there and tell the truth') rather than just boycotting, arguing for a judgment-based approach to presence.
Shining Path negative
Mentioned as an example of 'pure outside' politics (Sendero Luminoso) with which Žižek disagrees, preferring internal intervention.
Mentioned as a 'beloved' figure whose medical treatment was the subject of truth-telling in the Soviet Union.
Richard Rorty positive
Žižek expresses 'a certain respect' for Rorty because he states liberal views clearly, unlike other liberals who are less honest.
Listed alongside Dawkins as examples of thinkers who, despite theoretical differences with Habermas and Derrida, agree on political positions.
Judith Butler negative
Cited as someone who misunderstands Lacan’s 'Real' as a fixed, transhistorical impossibility rather than a site for intervention.
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens negative
Cited as a defender of the 'nomadic' subjectivity of late capitalism, where one must constantly reinvent oneself due to the loss of secure jobs, which Žižek critiques as a form of capitalist ideology.
Mentioned as the ruler involved in the Karađorđević coup in Serbian history.
Mentioned as the US Foreign Minister during the Tito-Stalin split, representing the geopolitical maneuvering of the era.
Gustave Le Bon negative
Used as a foil to Freud; Le Bon’s view of collective hypnosis as a 'primordial regressive phenomenon' is rejected by Žižek/Freud.
Sam Harris negative
Cited as justifying torture and arguing for a 'wall of tyranny' against Muslim countries, a view Žižek deconstructs as a false problem.
Alain Badiou positive
Cited as not fitting the 'left of the left' position; Žižek is 'on Badiou's side' regarding his focus on universality rather than openness to the other.
Giorgio Agamben negative
Žižek critiques Agamben's boycott of the US as hypocritical, noting that biometric scanning has long been applied to African immigrants, highlighting the selective outrage of intellectuals.
Michel Foucault negative
Cited as the one who celebrates madness, a stance Žižek explicitly rejects when discussing 'mad poets.'
Listed alongside Dennett as examples of thinkers who agree with Habermas and Derrida on political urgency.
Ernesto Laclau negative
Criticized for linking psychoanalytic sublimation (elevating remainders to the level of the Thing) with his own concept of hegemony; Žižek argues this is the 'logic of desire,' not drive.
Jacques Rancière positive
Cited alongside Badiou for the concept of 'the part of no part' regarding the political agent.
Christopher Hitchens positive
Praised for bringing the logic of the Hague tribunal to its 'scandalous' end by proposing to arrest Kissinger, exposing the system's hypocrisy.
Jacques-Alain Miller positive
Cited for his 'naive quick way' of pointing out the gap in ego psychology; Žižek agrees with his assessment of the superego injunction.
Quoted by Miller and adopted by Žižek: 'we should be glad it's a good sign to be attacked by the enemies.'
Jeremy Bentham positive
Praised as a 'great British humanist progressive dialectical materialist' and 'ultimate anal economist' for his detailed, useful designs in the Panopticon.
Referenced regarding 'constitutive violence' and 'divine violence,' which Žižek uses to reframe 'dictatorship of the proletariat' in fashionable terms.
Mentioned as a figure whose potential arrest by the Hague would have exposed the tribunal's bias against third-world nations.
William Shakespeare positive
Cited for the passage in A Midsummer Night's Dream defining the madman, lover, and poet, which Žižek uses to formulate his Lacanian-Hegelian theory.
Jokingly told to leave so Žižek is not embarrassed by his critique of Badiou/Lacan.
Used as an example of a liberal intellectual who, despite theoretical differences with Derrida, reconciled during the Iraq War.
Plato positive
Cited as being 'right' in his idea to imprison poets, aligning with Žižek's hatred of poets.
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited as the source of the dialectical view that psychoanalysis explains its own failure; Žižek sees this as a strength.
Mentioned in the context of the arrogance of criticizing such a 'great mind'.
Immanuel Kant positive
Cited as the 'greatest cosmopolitan' who never left Königsberg, used to support the argument that true philosophical nomadism is intellectual, not physical.
Mentioned as a General whose extradition to the Hague was demanded by American diplomats.
Friedrich Nietzsche positive
Referenced in the context of the 'proto-Nietzschean theory' that illusion presupposes a doer behind a doing.
Cited by the audience member (and agreed with by Žižek) regarding the limits of immanent critique and the existence of irreconcilable presuppositions.
Mentioned as the US President during the early 50s, whose administration supported Tito’s split from Stalin.
Transcript 75 turns
Slavoj Žižek
Thank you very much. Maybe I will not just cover all the main topics, but just a couple of points that I would like to make. Thinking about the debate yesterday at the end where the question was okay, where is the program or variations on this? Well, I think that while these questions are legitimate, what bothers me more—and I wonder if you agree—is kind of what would be for me a properly philosophical approach, a step back. How is it that people expect from somebody like me or from an intellectual that? I mean, this is not a self-evident thing, that you think that an intellectual failed if he doesn't provide some kind of a guideline, what to do and so on. So, that's the first thing to note. I'm not saying I'm well aware of the dangers of this, that there is a whole theory of developed by so-called postmodern intellectuals where they claim that this precisely was the traditional intellectual, no? And that precisely we should abandon that it's a different role of an intellectual and so on and so on. But I'm just saying that this is for me what philosophy can do precisely in this case. My duty is not to give you a program. My duty is just to step back and ask you what is implied in the fact that you expect this and what can be done then. Because what did strike me—I mentioned this in one of my books—what did strike me already when I read this statement by Richard Rorty a decade ago. Okay, everybody makes fun of Richard Rorty, too simplistic, whatever, but I have a certain respect for him, at least he says things clearly what other liberals don't dare to say. Richard Rorty is for me like for left liberalism what Ayn Rand is for capitalism, you know, the madman who puts it clearly is that with all these debates intellectuals struggling and so on, did you notice how when you come to actual political positions what the surprising thing is to what extent they agree? Like theoretically people like Habermas—some example, let me take from theory—Habermas, Derrida, and let's take, I don't know, Daniel Dennett or Dawkins. They, at least till the recent reconciliation between Habermas and Derrida, it was hatred, each other holding for an idiot. But the surprise is—which is why I wasn't surprised by the final reconciliation between Derrida and Habermas—whenever there was a political urgency, Iraq War or whatever, all of a sudden differences disappear.
Thank you very much. Maybe I will not just cover all the main topics, but just a couple of points that I would like to make. Thinking about the debate yesterday at the end where the question was okay, where is the program or variations on this? Well, I think that while these questions are legitimate, what bothers me more—and I wonder if you agree—is kind of what would be for me a properly philosophical approach, a step back. How is it that people expect from somebody like me or from an intellectual that? I mean, this is not a self-evident thing, that you think that an intellectual failed if he doesn't provide some kind of a guideline, what to do and so on. So, that's the first thing to note. I'm not saying I'm well aware of the dangers of this, that there is a whole theory of developed by so-called postmodern intellectuals where they claim that this precisely was the traditional intellectual, no? And that precisely we should abandon that it's a different role of an intellectual and so on and so on. But I'm just saying that this is for me what philosophy can do precisely in this case. My duty is not to give you a program. My duty is just to step back and ask you what is implied in the fact that you expect this and what can be done then. Because what did strike me—I mentioned this in one of my books—what did strike me already when I read this statement by Richard Rorty a decade ago. Okay, everybody makes fun of Richard Rorty, too simplistic, whatever, but I have a certain respect for him, at least he says things clearly what other liberals don't dare to say. Richard Rorty is for me like for left liberalism what Ayn Rand is for capitalism, you know, the madman who puts it clearly is that with all these debates intellectuals struggling and so on, did you notice how when you come to actual political positions what the surprising thing is to what extent they agree? Like theoretically people like Habermas—some example, let me take from theory—Habermas, Derrida, and let's take, I don't know, Daniel Dennett or Dawkins. They, at least till the recent reconciliation between Habermas and Derrida, it was hatred, each other holding for an idiot. But the surprise is—which is why I wasn't surprised by the final reconciliation between Derrida and Habermas—whenever there was a political urgency, Iraq War or whatever, all of a sudden differences disappear.
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Slavoj Žižek
the same position which even can be I think more precisely described, a kind of a left of the left of center, just a little bit further than the official social democracy while avoiding what they perceive as totalitarian dangers and so on and so on. Like to be an immanent but a little bit more radical voice of basically the leftist establishment. And again, there they all agree. This position is the one that I don't want to occupy because incidentally Rorty's conclusion is then the radical one which has its own justification, it's simply that philosophy doesn't matter. That we can forget that, that it's a bit illusion to think that philosophical reflection helps us in any way apropos of political decisions and so on and so on. My point here is that nonetheless it's not as simple as it appears in the sense that there are nonetheless philosophers who do not fit this left of the left of center position. For example, Alain Badiou definitely doesn't fit it. And some others, I mean. So I think that this would be my first thesis that philosophical positions do matter and that if anything this, for example, in spite of their spitting on each other very violently at least for some years, strange final reconciliation between Habermas and Derrida is for me rather the sign of a fact that what if they were not so terribly opposed in spite of their official opposition? As I tried to develop in one critical note in I even forgot which of my books, it's the idea is that nonetheless they are for me just the two complementary sides of the same underlying problem of openness towards the otherness, taking into account the otherness. And I think that they move within this basic same field. Habermas's accent is: it's not enough this abstract openness towards otherness, it's too idiosyncratic, it can explode, it has to be regulated by some discursive mechanisms, the ethics of communication. Without this it explodes or implodes, however you want it. Derrida the opposing point, that any rules, fixed rules, prevent true opening towards the other. But again, it's the underlying problem is the same and again to evoke the already mentioned name, I definitely don't think that Badiou enters this space. His problem whatever it is—and I am here on Badiou's side—is definitely not opening towards the other. So that's the first point. The second brief point, it came to me while I was pretending towards the football but was really thinking yesterday to give you another example what I meant by this dictatorship of the proletariat—the dictatorship aspect. First, okay, are you aware that I could have put it but I resisted the temptation in much more fashionable terms than at least the majority of today's corrupted deconstructionist academics would find it much more acceptable? If instead of dictatorship of the proletariat if I would say Benjamin constitutive constituted constitutive violence, no? Then everybody would say, "Oh now we know," no? Maybe this is another way. Where I don't follow Benjamin is then his opposition of this divine violence, sacred violence, but that's another topic. But I wanted to give you another simple example of what I mean by this dictatorial dimension that we should assume from a different domain but I think the parallel is clear. Imagine a philosophical debate between a hermeneutician, a deconstructionist, an analytical philosopher. What they will sooner or later discover is that they when they debate is that they do not simply occupy different positions within a shared common space called philosophy. What distinguishes them is the very notion of what philosophy as such is. That is to say each of them perceives the entire field in a different way. You know what I mean? It's not they don't simply have differences, they differ in their very differences, how should I put it? Like if you ask the analytical participant, how do you perceive not your position but the entire field? His answer would have been a clear one. Like the guy who wrote there recently—I like the book because it's simplistic but a clear statement on the position—Introduction to Philosophy, a guy called I think Nicholas Fearn. His idea is clear: so-called continental philosophers simply didn't get the point, that philosophy finally today—by today he doesn't mean the standard analytical philosophy not even late Wittgenstein but let's call it brain sciences, cognitivist turn—that philosophy finally reached maturity. And that it's as simple as that, that with this we move into a totally different domain, finally we abandon all those metaphysical ideological speculations and so on and so on. Now if you ask somebody like hermeneutician, he would have held the exact opposite opinion that with this cognitivist turn philosophy finally abandoned its most fundamental or forgot, lost its most fundamental philosophical vocation itself, that it's finally no longer even philosophy but simple problem solving at the level of positive sciences. And there is something in it. Like if you take today's an average United States—large majority of them—philosophy department, to put it in a pointed way but which is literally true, if you want to do a study of Hegel's Logic you will very rarely find it there. It would be a much greater chance that you will find a class of Hegel's Logic in comparative literature, German studies, even English studies, even French studies. Why? If you do something which at least to my corrupted continental mind appears as something more to do with bio-physiology like cutting brains of a rat to see some neural connections, links how they function, it's a great chance that you do, you know, that at the philosophy department. So literally doing experiments with the brains of a rat is philosophy, studying Hegel's Logic is not. So I hope you got my point. The point is then that you cannot say that the three philosophers debating it would say, "Okay we share certain presuppositions, we address the same fundamental questions: what is reality? blah blah, but we there are then specific differences." This gradual classificatory logic of this is what we share, here our differences begin, is suspended, breaks down. You differ in the very way how you define difference. This is for me what I was trying in a confused way maybe to articulate as the lesson of Hegel's concrete universality, that each particular element as it were has its own universality so that the struggle is never a struggle of particulars within universality. It's the struggle for what is universality. Again, a simple example: isn't it clear to you how every history of philosophy which describes different orientations implies its own universal notion of what philosophy is? There is no neutral classification. So, what's my point? My point is that this is what I call the dictatorial level. No matter how open I am, I presume, impute, or however you put it, this imposed universal frame. No matter how much I emphasize mine is only a particular position, to define it as a particular position I impute, I impose a universal frame. And in this raw or rather rough homology, the same goes I think for politics. We enter the dimension of dictatorship—this is what I mean by it—when we become aware of how when the struggle is no longer just a struggle within a predefined field but it's a struggle about the field of struggle itself. There I claim democracy breaks down because you have a more radical antagonism. Or to make you feel this same dictatorial dimension even in today's theoretical debates—since I made fun of analytical philosophy, hermeneuticians—let me mention postmodern deconstructionism. Didn't you notice how whenever you read polemics, debates and so on, how every discourse—and that would be one of the lessons of Lacan's master signifier—every discourse has a moment of closure in the sense of, how do you call it, it has certain turns of the phrase, blah blah where you say that and for you it's over. Like for example, not long maybe today the time is running out but at least a couple of years ago, if you said for somebody, "But you remain here fixed into your identity. You should assume a more nomadic position, difference." Then things were clear. How should I put it? You know, like identity bad, nomadic good, or change versus stasis, multitude versus one and so on and so on. This imposed element cannot be simply dismissed as a remainder of whatever. It's a dictatorial element if you want of discourse itself. Which is why Lacan insists on the role of the master signifier and so on and so on. So this is what I meant by dictatorship, that there is a level where what is at stake is the field itself and there democracy breaks down. Why proletariat? Why egalitarian? Well, the answer I'm tempted to give here almost is the very formal Badiouian answer, which is that insofar as we refer to the political agent as those who are, as Badiou puts it or rather Rancière and here he is close to Badiou, the part of no part and so on. They are precisely part—it's those who are part of the universal situation without having a specific place within the situation, which means they belong to the situation directly at the level of universality and so on and so on. Okay, let me stop with this and just give you if you allow me a couple of hints of what I think should philosophy can do today. I think that again the main thing as I repeated, was repeating all the time, is to withdraw and change the very perception of the problem. For example, one of the commonplaces of the so-called linguistic turn is to emphasize how language is not a neutral medium of designation, it is a practice embedded in a life-world, we do things with language and so on and so on. So you notice this cliché how there are some bad people presumed for whom language is a pure instrument and so on and so on. I think maybe it's time to turn this around. One should emphasize how language is precisely not only a moment of life-world, a practice within it. The miracle of language is that it can also serve as a neutral medium which just designates a conceptual ideal content. In other words, what is the true task is not to locate language as a neutral medium within a life-world practice but to show how within this life-world a neutral medium, universal medium can explode. I think we should exactly turn it around. I think that the problem is not this de-reification, how we shouldn't reify language into a neutral medium, we should be aware how is it grounded in a concrete life practice. No, that's precisely I claim—and here I think I'm a good Badiouian—the non-interesting part of the story. This is, I'm tempted to say, a theoretically non-interesting vulgarity. My god, of course every language is grounded in a life-world blah blah blah. The true miracle is: are we condemned to that, to this kind of cultural relativism or—and if yes—how can we break out of it? Another thing that I like to do, if maybe I even do it too much, is how should I call it, I always like to do this maybe fast diagnostic where I maybe resemble Adorno at his worst because I think that there is a whole aspect of Adorno which is just the ultimate irony: the one who wrote so much against fetishization, this you know like Wagnerian leitmotifs, I claim that he very often practiced it, Adorno, in the sense of you can see how he was in love with paradoxical formulas, you know this like "nothing is more true in psychoanalysis than its exaggerations" or whatever. So, but nonetheless I somehow think that this can work. You just focus on a ridiculous detail and gain an insight. Like it came to me now what's the difference between Europe and United States. You know that in United States they count floors in a hotel, they start with one, one to three, they don't have a ground floor. Precisely they don't have a ground, they start directly. We have ground. I think everything is there in a way if you want, no? Or the—I don't like to tell you frankly I'm an old-fashioned romantic. If I were to choose between Brontë sisters and Jane Austen, screw Jane Austen. I don't like her wisdom and so on. But what fascinated me so much and I think this would be a nice analysis of historical shifts: I read somewhere, I forgot even where, how Pride and Prejudice—okay Darcy and Elizabeth—okay, who is pride, who is prejudice? Originally I think it's clear that it was meant that Darcy stands for pride, arrogant pride, Elizabeth for prejudice. But I read a nice analysis that today it imperceptibly shifts, that it's rather Darcy who is full of prejudices and Elizabeth who is too proud. Or another thing to show you, it's a very elementary what I think even if we don't have a positive program, a critical analysis can do. The guy to whom I already referred as the guy who justifies torture, Sam Harris in his "The End of Belief," he writes this making a standard liberal argument against exporting democracy to Muslim countries: "This is a terrible truth that we have to face. The only thing that currently stands between us and the rolling ocean of Muslim unreason is a wall of tyranny and human rights abuses that we have helped to erect." This is okay, there is a truth in it, let's admit it. Like you give democracy to Algerians or whomever they will elect so-called what we perceive as fundamentalists. But I claim it's nonetheless a false problem. Why? Because underlying it is this old boring liberal debate: are the Muslim crowds mature enough, culturally fit for democracy, or should we support only enlightened despotism among their rulers? I claim that the problem here is that both terms are false since the choice formulated in this way is: either we impose on them our democracy or we exploit their backwardness. What is the true solution here? It's not so much to say directly, "Let them invent their own democracy" and so on and so on. This is too nice sounding for me. I think the true question is: what if the wall of tyranny and human rights abuses that we have helped to erect is precisely what sustains and generates the rolling ocean of Muslim unreason? You know, to see where the question itself is false. Or and if you permit me then I will stop it, the last one a very poetic one. I found a nice quote in Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream, where many of the differences between the positions I try to elaborate—this is a philosophical point—is nicely formulated. It's from Act Scene where Theseus defines very nicely, probably you all know the passage, the difference between a madman, a lover and the poet: "The lunatic, the lover and the poet are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name." Then it goes on, "Such tricks hath strong imagination," blah blah blah, "that if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy." I like this proto-Nietzschean theory that the illusion being that you presuppose behind a doing a doer, you substantialize it. But what I like is the first triad: a madman sees devils everywhere, misperceives a bush as a bear; a lover sees sublime beauty in an ordinary face; a poet gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. So in all three cases we have the gap between ordinary reality and a transcendent ethereal dimension. But this gap is gradually reduced. The madman simply misperceives a real object as something else. He does not see what is there. There is a bush, you perceive it as an animal. It's simple misperception. A lover already collapses the distinction. A lover sees what is there but perceives the other dimension as immanent to it. A lover—what would be a madman lover? The one who would perceive a bush as a wild animal or to use Shakespeare's metaphor, to an ugly Egyptian woman to misperceive her as Helen. No, the lover is much more refined. The lover doesn't—which is why Lacan is right, love is not idealization—the lover accepts fully the reality of the beloved and sees in it the sublime dimension. It's not "I see in you something more," you are, I accept you totally. Idealization is not love for Lacan. So we have this which is already immanent. No misperception but I perceive you the way you are, I see the other dimension directly in you. And then with poetry even more radical: empirical reality is there transubstantiated but not into immanent materialization of some higher reality like that you as an ordinary girl are for me Helen of Troy. What you stand for is nothing. Poetry can create something out of nothing. That is to say true poetry does not change things in the sense of making rendering them modes of appearances of a higher dimension, it just makes them visible against the background of a void, of a nothingness. I think it's a very nice point of Lacanian-Hegelian theory. We have a triad which ends up with this absolute immanence of negativity. What more do you want from stupid poets? Okay, maybe enough as an introduction. So how do you see yourself as a poet, a lover, or a madman? Okay, now I will give you the cheap answer. My problem is that definitely a madman because I hate poets. I think poet—I think that if Plato was anywhere right it was in his idea to imprison poets. As I already told you it's my running joke, my god, if there is a lesson from post-Yugoslav civil war is that don't fear industrial-military complex—okay fear it but fear even more what we had in ex-Yugoslavia: poetic-military complex. I mean really the here we there I agree with Chesterton, we would have needed a kind of a not only a—you know when you remember when I quoted to you Chesterton when he said ordinary policeman is looking for criminals, we are reading so and sonnets where the crime is prepared? Where there literally was a sonnet written by a Slovene poet which was preparing the crimes. I mean you know it's literally true. In ex-Yugoslavia what was really needed was this kind of artistic police. And I have no problems here doing what Lenin did in that philosophy steamer or whatever. So I'm—okay, the cheap thing to say would have been I'm a mad poet to bring in the synthesis somehow and so on, no? But okay, more seriously what I would have done is I think that the line of distinction is to be drawn within poetry, with poetry which is truly poetry—I'm here very old-fashioned—which really makes something appear against the background of nothing and the mad poets who—and I think the problem are the mad poets. And most of them are mad, I think, and I don't mean this in any Foucauldian way celebrating madness and so on. No, they are simply mad at some point we should... okay, whatever, conclusion. Okay, now I suggested that we should break down the questions and points that we want to make according to certain themes. Now obviously we're not going to stick to that in a strict fashion. I mean these areas are relatively independent but they of course also depend on each other. So if people wanted to start with discussing psychoanalysis and Lacan and then we'll move on... yes? Yeah, um, in your introduction, in the article you wrote in the London Review of Books, you said that now is the time for psychoanalysis whereas people see its demise, Badiou in particular. Um, and as a psychoanalytic practitioner, I would like to get from you some comments about the rise and rise of cognitive behavioral therapy, um, the NHS here sees this as the only—the only viable thing, the thing that works. And in relation to that, in largely at the provocation of most of the psychotherapy and psychoanalytic organizations, the government here is likely to introduce state regulation of all psychotherapies including psychoanalysis. And I just wonder if—what comments you might have about the implications for the practice and ethics in particular of psychoanalysis should that—should that rise, should that occur. I mean, of course I am worried about these developments. Of course I agree with those who organized protests and so on and so on. My—I have only a couple of... so I would like to... I wouldn't like to lose time to state the obvious, no, the threats that I see and so on. The problems I see are the following ones, that nonetheless how, as far as I know at least in France, this protest movement, what worried me is to what extent this protest movement even softly flirted with some—I will put it openly, that's how I perceived it—rightist-liberal motives. Because the process you described can be described in two terms. It can be described in this old leftist-anarchist—I mean here the term anarchist in good terms—worry about state regulation, disciplinary measures. Or it can be perceived in more rightist-liberal terms, you see even if socialism communism went bankrupt, this logic of state regulation, you know, to refer to these topics. And I don't think that the difference was clear here. Second point, I nonetheless think that the first thing to do, I mean why is psychoanalysis losing? I mean it's not a great mystery here why it is losing, no? I mean the whole of today's ideology, efficiency, not only ideology in the sense of technocratic ideology but even this new spiritualist ideologies, realize yourself and so on, all this goes against it. And I think that there is not even a big problem to account for it. If anything, I think let's remember how for Freud—that's I think the properly Freudian dialectics of relationship between psychoanalytic theory and practice—for Freud psychoanalytic theory was not simply a theoretical foundation of psychoanalytic practice, it was always ultimately how should I put it, an account of why psychoanalytic practice has ultimately to fail. Freud openly said somewhere I think that psychoanalysis as a profession would only have been possible in a society which would no longer have need of psychoanalysis and so on and so on. So I think that precisely
the same position which even can be I think more precisely described, a kind of a left of the left of center, just a little bit further than the official social democracy while avoiding what they perceive as totalitarian dangers and so on and so on. Like to be an immanent but a little bit more radical voice of basically the leftist establishment. And again, there they all agree. This position is the one that I don't want to occupy because incidentally Rorty's conclusion is then the radical one which has its own justification, it's simply that philosophy doesn't matter. That we can forget that, that it's a bit illusion to think that philosophical reflection helps us in any way apropos of political decisions and so on and so on. My point here is that nonetheless it's not as simple as it appears in the sense that there are nonetheless philosophers who do not fit this left of the left of center position. For example, Alain Badiou definitely doesn't fit it. And some others, I mean. So I think that this would be my first thesis that philosophical positions do matter and that if anything this, for example, in spite of their spitting on each other very violently at least for some years, strange final reconciliation between Habermas and Derrida is for me rather the sign of a fact that what if they were not so terribly opposed in spite of their official opposition? As I tried to develop in one critical note in I even forgot which of my books, it's the idea is that nonetheless they are for me just the two complementary sides of the same underlying problem of openness towards the otherness, taking into account the otherness. And I think that they move within this basic same field. Habermas's accent is: it's not enough this abstract openness towards otherness, it's too idiosyncratic, it can explode, it has to be regulated by some discursive mechanisms, the ethics of communication. Without this it explodes or implodes, however you want it. Derrida the opposing point, that any rules, fixed rules, prevent true opening towards the other. But again, it's the underlying problem is the same and again to evoke the already mentioned name, I definitely don't think that Badiou enters this space. His problem whatever it is—and I am here on Badiou's side—is definitely not opening towards the other. So that's the first point. The second brief point, it came to me while I was pretending towards the football but was really thinking yesterday to give you another example what I meant by this dictatorship of the proletariat—the dictatorship aspect. First, okay, are you aware that I could have put it but I resisted the temptation in much more fashionable terms than at least the majority of today's corrupted deconstructionist academics would find it much more acceptable? If instead of dictatorship of the proletariat if I would say Benjamin constitutive constituted constitutive violence, no? Then everybody would say, "Oh now we know," no? Maybe this is another way. Where I don't follow Benjamin is then his opposition of this divine violence, sacred violence, but that's another topic. But I wanted to give you another simple example of what I mean by this dictatorial dimension that we should assume from a different domain but I think the parallel is clear. Imagine a philosophical debate between a hermeneutician, a deconstructionist, an analytical philosopher. What they will sooner or later discover is that they when they debate is that they do not simply occupy different positions within a shared common space called philosophy. What distinguishes them is the very notion of what philosophy as such is. That is to say each of them perceives the entire field in a different way. You know what I mean? It's not they don't simply have differences, they differ in their very differences, how should I put it? Like if you ask the analytical participant, how do you perceive not your position but the entire field? His answer would have been a clear one. Like the guy who wrote there recently—I like the book because it's simplistic but a clear statement on the position—Introduction to Philosophy, a guy called I think Nicholas Fearn. His idea is clear: so-called continental philosophers simply didn't get the point, that philosophy finally today—by today he doesn't mean the standard analytical philosophy not even late Wittgenstein but let's call it brain sciences, cognitivist turn—that philosophy finally reached maturity. And that it's as simple as that, that with this we move into a totally different domain, finally we abandon all those metaphysical ideological speculations and so on and so on. Now if you ask somebody like hermeneutician, he would have held the exact opposite opinion that with this cognitivist turn philosophy finally abandoned its most fundamental or forgot, lost its most fundamental philosophical vocation itself, that it's finally no longer even philosophy but simple problem solving at the level of positive sciences. And there is something in it. Like if you take today's an average United States—large majority of them—philosophy department, to put it in a pointed way but which is literally true, if you want to do a study of Hegel's Logic you will very rarely find it there. It would be a much greater chance that you will find a class of Hegel's Logic in comparative literature, German studies, even English studies, even French studies. Why? If you do something which at least to my corrupted continental mind appears as something more to do with bio-physiology like cutting brains of a rat to see some neural connections, links how they function, it's a great chance that you do, you know, that at the philosophy department. So literally doing experiments with the brains of a rat is philosophy, studying Hegel's Logic is not. So I hope you got my point. The point is then that you cannot say that the three philosophers debating it would say, "Okay we share certain presuppositions, we address the same fundamental questions: what is reality? blah blah, but we there are then specific differences." This gradual classificatory logic of this is what we share, here our differences begin, is suspended, breaks down. You differ in the very way how you define difference. This is for me what I was trying in a confused way maybe to articulate as the lesson of Hegel's concrete universality, that each particular element as it were has its own universality so that the struggle is never a struggle of particulars within universality. It's the struggle for what is universality. Again, a simple example: isn't it clear to you how every history of philosophy which describes different orientations implies its own universal notion of what philosophy is? There is no neutral classification. So, what's my point? My point is that this is what I call the dictatorial level. No matter how open I am, I presume, impute, or however you put it, this imposed universal frame. No matter how much I emphasize mine is only a particular position, to define it as a particular position I impute, I impose a universal frame. And in this raw or rather rough homology, the same goes I think for politics. We enter the dimension of dictatorship—this is what I mean by it—when we become aware of how when the struggle is no longer just a struggle within a predefined field but it's a struggle about the field of struggle itself. There I claim democracy breaks down because you have a more radical antagonism. Or to make you feel this same dictatorial dimension even in today's theoretical debates—since I made fun of analytical philosophy, hermeneuticians—let me mention postmodern deconstructionism. Didn't you notice how whenever you read polemics, debates and so on, how every discourse—and that would be one of the lessons of Lacan's master signifier—every discourse has a moment of closure in the sense of, how do you call it, it has certain turns of the phrase, blah blah where you say that and for you it's over. Like for example, not long maybe today the time is running out but at least a couple of years ago, if you said for somebody, "But you remain here fixed into your identity. You should assume a more nomadic position, difference." Then things were clear. How should I put it? You know, like identity bad, nomadic good, or change versus stasis, multitude versus one and so on and so on. This imposed element cannot be simply dismissed as a remainder of whatever. It's a dictatorial element if you want of discourse itself. Which is why Lacan insists on the role of the master signifier and so on and so on. So this is what I meant by dictatorship, that there is a level where what is at stake is the field itself and there democracy breaks down. Why proletariat? Why egalitarian? Well, the answer I'm tempted to give here almost is the very formal Badiouian answer, which is that insofar as we refer to the political agent as those who are, as Badiou puts it or rather Rancière and here he is close to Badiou, the part of no part and so on. They are precisely part—it's those who are part of the universal situation without having a specific place within the situation, which means they belong to the situation directly at the level of universality and so on and so on. Okay, let me stop with this and just give you if you allow me a couple of hints of what I think should philosophy can do today. I think that again the main thing as I repeated, was repeating all the time, is to withdraw and change the very perception of the problem. For example, one of the commonplaces of the so-called linguistic turn is to emphasize how language is not a neutral medium of designation, it is a practice embedded in a life-world, we do things with language and so on and so on. So you notice this cliché how there are some bad people presumed for whom language is a pure instrument and so on and so on. I think maybe it's time to turn this around. One should emphasize how language is precisely not only a moment of life-world, a practice within it. The miracle of language is that it can also serve as a neutral medium which just designates a conceptual ideal content. In other words, what is the true task is not to locate language as a neutral medium within a life-world practice but to show how within this life-world a neutral medium, universal medium can explode. I think we should exactly turn it around. I think that the problem is not this de-reification, how we shouldn't reify language into a neutral medium, we should be aware how is it grounded in a concrete life practice. No, that's precisely I claim—and here I think I'm a good Badiouian—the non-interesting part of the story. This is, I'm tempted to say, a theoretically non-interesting vulgarity. My god, of course every language is grounded in a life-world blah blah blah. The true miracle is: are we condemned to that, to this kind of cultural relativism or—and if yes—how can we break out of it? Another thing that I like to do, if maybe I even do it too much, is how should I call it, I always like to do this maybe fast diagnostic where I maybe resemble Adorno at his worst because I think that there is a whole aspect of Adorno which is just the ultimate irony: the one who wrote so much against fetishization, this you know like Wagnerian leitmotifs, I claim that he very often practiced it, Adorno, in the sense of you can see how he was in love with paradoxical formulas, you know this like "nothing is more true in psychoanalysis than its exaggerations" or whatever. So, but nonetheless I somehow think that this can work. You just focus on a ridiculous detail and gain an insight. Like it came to me now what's the difference between Europe and United States. You know that in United States they count floors in a hotel, they start with one, one to three, they don't have a ground floor. Precisely they don't have a ground, they start directly. We have ground. I think everything is there in a way if you want, no? Or the—I don't like to tell you frankly I'm an old-fashioned romantic. If I were to choose between Brontë sisters and Jane Austen, screw Jane Austen. I don't like her wisdom and so on. But what fascinated me so much and I think this would be a nice analysis of historical shifts: I read somewhere, I forgot even where, how Pride and Prejudice—okay Darcy and Elizabeth—okay, who is pride, who is prejudice? Originally I think it's clear that it was meant that Darcy stands for pride, arrogant pride, Elizabeth for prejudice. But I read a nice analysis that today it imperceptibly shifts, that it's rather Darcy who is full of prejudices and Elizabeth who is too proud. Or another thing to show you, it's a very elementary what I think even if we don't have a positive program, a critical analysis can do. The guy to whom I already referred as the guy who justifies torture, Sam Harris in his "The End of Belief," he writes this making a standard liberal argument against exporting democracy to Muslim countries: "This is a terrible truth that we have to face. The only thing that currently stands between us and the rolling ocean of Muslim unreason is a wall of tyranny and human rights abuses that we have helped to erect." This is okay, there is a truth in it, let's admit it. Like you give democracy to Algerians or whomever they will elect so-called what we perceive as fundamentalists. But I claim it's nonetheless a false problem. Why? Because underlying it is this old boring liberal debate: are the Muslim crowds mature enough, culturally fit for democracy, or should we support only enlightened despotism among their rulers? I claim that the problem here is that both terms are false since the choice formulated in this way is: either we impose on them our democracy or we exploit their backwardness. What is the true solution here? It's not so much to say directly, "Let them invent their own democracy" and so on and so on. This is too nice sounding for me. I think the true question is: what if the wall of tyranny and human rights abuses that we have helped to erect is precisely what sustains and generates the rolling ocean of Muslim unreason? You know, to see where the question itself is false. Or and if you permit me then I will stop it, the last one a very poetic one. I found a nice quote in Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream, where many of the differences between the positions I try to elaborate—this is a philosophical point—is nicely formulated. It's from Act Scene where Theseus defines very nicely, probably you all know the passage, the difference between a madman, a lover and the poet: "The lunatic, the lover and the poet are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name." Then it goes on, "Such tricks hath strong imagination," blah blah blah, "that if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy." I like this proto-Nietzschean theory that the illusion being that you presuppose behind a doing a doer, you substantialize it. But what I like is the first triad: a madman sees devils everywhere, misperceives a bush as a bear; a lover sees sublime beauty in an ordinary face; a poet gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. So in all three cases we have the gap between ordinary reality and a transcendent ethereal dimension. But this gap is gradually reduced. The madman simply misperceives a real object as something else. He does not see what is there. There is a bush, you perceive it as an animal. It's simple misperception. A lover already collapses the distinction. A lover sees what is there but perceives the other dimension as immanent to it. A lover—what would be a madman lover? The one who would perceive a bush as a wild animal or to use Shakespeare's metaphor, to an ugly Egyptian woman to misperceive her as Helen. No, the lover is much more refined. The lover doesn't—which is why Lacan is right, love is not idealization—the lover accepts fully the reality of the beloved and sees in it the sublime dimension. It's not "I see in you something more," you are, I accept you totally. Idealization is not love for Lacan. So we have this which is already immanent. No misperception but I perceive you the way you are, I see the other dimension directly in you. And then with poetry even more radical: empirical reality is there transubstantiated but not into immanent materialization of some higher reality like that you as an ordinary girl are for me Helen of Troy. What you stand for is nothing. Poetry can create something out of nothing. That is to say true poetry does not change things in the sense of making rendering them modes of appearances of a higher dimension, it just makes them visible against the background of a void, of a nothingness. I think it's a very nice point of Lacanian-Hegelian theory. We have a triad which ends up with this absolute immanence of negativity. What more do you want from stupid poets? Okay, maybe enough as an introduction. So how do you see yourself as a poet, a lover, or a madman? Okay, now I will give you the cheap answer. My problem is that definitely a madman because I hate poets. I think poet—I think that if Plato was anywhere right it was in his idea to imprison poets. As I already told you it's my running joke, my god, if there is a lesson from post-Yugoslav civil war is that don't fear industrial-military complex—okay fear it but fear even more what we had in ex-Yugoslavia: poetic-military complex. I mean really the here we there I agree with Chesterton, we would have needed a kind of a not only a—you know when you remember when I quoted to you Chesterton when he said ordinary policeman is looking for criminals, we are reading so and sonnets where the crime is prepared? Where there literally was a sonnet written by a Slovene poet which was preparing the crimes. I mean you know it's literally true. In ex-Yugoslavia what was really needed was this kind of artistic police. And I have no problems here doing what Lenin did in that philosophy steamer or whatever. So I'm—okay, the cheap thing to say would have been I'm a mad poet to bring in the synthesis somehow and so on, no? But okay, more seriously what I would have done is I think that the line of distinction is to be drawn within poetry, with poetry which is truly poetry—I'm here very old-fashioned—which really makes something appear against the background of nothing and the mad poets who—and I think the problem are the mad poets. And most of them are mad, I think, and I don't mean this in any Foucauldian way celebrating madness and so on. No, they are simply mad at some point we should... okay, whatever, conclusion. Okay, now I suggested that we should break down the questions and points that we want to make according to certain themes. Now obviously we're not going to stick to that in a strict fashion. I mean these areas are relatively independent but they of course also depend on each other. So if people wanted to start with discussing psychoanalysis and Lacan and then we'll move on... yes? Yeah, um, in your introduction, in the article you wrote in the London Review of Books, you said that now is the time for psychoanalysis whereas people see its demise, Badiou in particular. Um, and as a psychoanalytic practitioner, I would like to get from you some comments about the rise and rise of cognitive behavioral therapy, um, the NHS here sees this as the only—the only viable thing, the thing that works. And in relation to that, in largely at the provocation of most of the psychotherapy and psychoanalytic organizations, the government here is likely to introduce state regulation of all psychotherapies including psychoanalysis. And I just wonder if—what comments you might have about the implications for the practice and ethics in particular of psychoanalysis should that—should that rise, should that occur. I mean, of course I am worried about these developments. Of course I agree with those who organized protests and so on and so on. My—I have only a couple of... so I would like to... I wouldn't like to lose time to state the obvious, no, the threats that I see and so on. The problems I see are the following ones, that nonetheless how, as far as I know at least in France, this protest movement, what worried me is to what extent this protest movement even softly flirted with some—I will put it openly, that's how I perceived it—rightist-liberal motives. Because the process you described can be described in two terms. It can be described in this old leftist-anarchist—I mean here the term anarchist in good terms—worry about state regulation, disciplinary measures. Or it can be perceived in more rightist-liberal terms, you see even if socialism communism went bankrupt, this logic of state regulation, you know, to refer to these topics. And I don't think that the difference was clear here. Second point, I nonetheless think that the first thing to do, I mean why is psychoanalysis losing? I mean it's not a great mystery here why it is losing, no? I mean the whole of today's ideology, efficiency, not only ideology in the sense of technocratic ideology but even this new spiritualist ideologies, realize yourself and so on, all this goes against it. And I think that there is not even a big problem to account for it. If anything, I think let's remember how for Freud—that's I think the properly Freudian dialectics of relationship between psychoanalytic theory and practice—for Freud psychoanalytic theory was not simply a theoretical foundation of psychoanalytic practice, it was always ultimately how should I put it, an account of why psychoanalytic practice has ultimately to fail. Freud openly said somewhere I think that psychoanalysis as a profession would only have been possible in a society which would no longer have need of psychoanalysis and so on and so on. So I think that precisely
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psychoanalytic
psychoanalytic
Slavoj Žižek
theory can give an account on why of this decline of psychoanalysis. And we shouldn't be afraid of the standard reproach which is used in the same way against psychoanalysis and against Marxism which is "Yeah, yeah they that this is kind of a close circular movement where they they always can explain their own defeat or their own failure as..." I mean I think that every theory is minimally circular in this way. What I want to say is that the lesson to be drawn is the following one, that insofar as psychoanalysis perceives itself as just one among the competing psychotherapeutic approaches, it's a lost battle. I think that psychoanalysis should do here two things. First, become aware of how—this is I think the ultimate proof of how this Freud's move to what is naively often called general social theory dimension, far from being an illegitimate move from technical writings of psychoanalysis to "Civilization and its Discontents" or whatever, is I think an inherent necessity because again, because psychoanalysis is always sorry its own meta-theory of its own failure. And I think it should go here to the to the end. For example, I think I report on this in one of my books, what always fascinated me is the beginning this minimally Foucauldian reading of psychoanalytic practice, namely reading in the sense of power relations. I mean the fundamental act of power of an analyst for me is what he has to do: is to draw this line of distinction. This is a phenomenon that is potentially pathological, deserves to be analyzed, and this is a phenomenon which just is. That's how we perceive the situation, no? And now I return to Jacques-Alain Miller who, this was years ago in one of his talks I remember, where he in a naive quick way but he convinced me, it's even if it's an exaggerated example, it's a nice one. He drew attention to a strange gap of how for example in the early 50s in the United States with the ego psychologists coming from being German Protestants, rather conservative moralists, their automatic assumption was the following one: you get a patient you get
theory can give an account on why of this decline of psychoanalysis. And we shouldn't be afraid of the standard reproach which is used in the same way against psychoanalysis and against Marxism which is "Yeah, yeah they that this is kind of a close circular movement where they they always can explain their own defeat or their own failure as..." I mean I think that every theory is minimally circular in this way. What I want to say is that the lesson to be drawn is the following one, that insofar as psychoanalysis perceives itself as just one among the competing psychotherapeutic approaches, it's a lost battle. I think that psychoanalysis should do here two things. First, become aware of how—this is I think the ultimate proof of how this Freud's move to what is naively often called general social theory dimension, far from being an illegitimate move from technical writings of psychoanalysis to "Civilization and its Discontents" or whatever, is I think an inherent necessity because again, because psychoanalysis is always sorry its own meta-theory of its own failure. And I think it should go here to the to the end. For example, I think I report on this in one of my books, what always fascinated me is the beginning this minimally Foucauldian reading of psychoanalytic practice, namely reading in the sense of power relations. I mean the fundamental act of power of an analyst for me is what he has to do: is to draw this line of distinction. This is a phenomenon that is potentially pathological, deserves to be analyzed, and this is a phenomenon which just is. That's how we perceive the situation, no? And now I return to Jacques-Alain Miller who, this was years ago in one of his talks I remember, where he in a naive quick way but he convinced me, it's even if it's an exaggerated example, it's a nice one. He drew attention to a strange gap of how for example in the early 50s in the United States with the ego psychologists coming from being German Protestants, rather conservative moralists, their automatic assumption was the following one: you get a patient you get
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somebody who is faithful to his wife, that's normal, he resolved Oedipus nothing. You get somebody who is jumping from one affair to the other, ah unresolved Oedipus, fixation, blah blah blah. It's—but you know what I mean—it's something perceived as something to be interpreted, probed into. And as in a simplified way Miller claims, if you go to Latin America where psychoanalysis as we know it is in Argentina extremely popular, it's practically
somebody who is faithful to his wife, that's normal, he resolved Oedipus nothing. You get somebody who is jumping from one affair to the other, ah unresolved Oedipus, fixation, blah blah blah. It's—but you know what I mean—it's something perceived as something to be interpreted, probed into. And as in a simplified way Miller claims, if you go to Latin America where psychoanalysis as we know it is in Argentina extremely popular, it's practically
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the opposite: if you jump around men or women it means you are normal, if you are faithful to your wife it's something to be interpreted, fixation. Okay, now what is the Freudian properly Freudian solution to this? It's not, "Oh we should be aware of the relativism of criteria." It's that everything has to be interpreted. If Freudian Freud's "Civilization and its Discontents" has any meaning is that psychic disturbances, malfunctioning, are always effects or to be accounted for against the background of some global radical malfunctioning of civilization
the opposite: if you jump around men or women it means you are normal, if you are faithful to your wife it's something to be interpreted, fixation. Okay, now what is the Freudian properly Freudian solution to this? It's not, "Oh we should be aware of the relativism of criteria." It's that everything has to be interpreted. If Freudian Freud's "Civilization and its Discontents" has any meaning is that psychic disturbances, malfunctioning, are always effects or to be accounted for against the background of some global radical malfunctioning of civilization
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itself. I think
itself. I think
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that
that
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so I think that the only way for psychoanalysis to survive is first to
so I think that the only way for psychoanalysis to survive is first to
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regain or to return to this more global attitude. Without this I think it cannot survive. It's a lost battle if it tries to legitimize itself only as a particular technique. And along these lines what I meant by "only today its time is arriving," I think that what I meant is simply that as I always like to repeat, that the early psychoanalysis although it's much more complex if you read Freud in detail, but nonetheless still stuck to this simplified vision: society thwarts some
regain or to return to this more global attitude. Without this I think it cannot survive. It's a lost battle if it tries to legitimize itself only as a particular technique. And along these lines what I meant by "only today its time is arriving," I think that what I meant is simply that as I always like to repeat, that the early psychoanalysis although it's much more complex if you read Freud in detail, but nonetheless still stuck to this simplified vision: society thwarts some
Slavoj Žižek
desires in us, you cannot enjoy, your access to enjoyment is blocked, the problem is you cannot do it so you go to the psychoanalyst, he liberates... psychoanalysis as promise of successful whatever access to life of pleasures. Today something much stranger happens: "enjoy" or "realize yourself" in all its variations is already the fundamental social injunction, superego injunction. And nonetheless if anything access to enjoyment is even more hindered. So I claim that the paradoxes which if we read Freud closely were already there, we confront—you know this naive misreading that Freud was really only about internalized social norms—this has fallen away. Today I think we are confronting the deadlock at its purest. So in this sense I think quite naively that it is only today that psychoanalysis has come, its time has truly arrived. But on the other hand, another lesson that we should draw—and it's part of that historical reflection—it's also what Lacan was pointing out all the time, that psychoanalysis is a specific social practice which can survive only in certain conditions and there is simply no guarantee that it will disappear—it's also possible that it will simply disappear, psychoanalysis. And again, far from taking this as an element of fear, I think that this is the greatness of psychoanalysis, that it can be so radically historical that it can envisage it can confront the prospect of its own of its own disappearance. So okay, I didn't give you a clear answer but along these lines I think that if at any point there were the best times for psychoanalysis they are today. And my first reaction, which was somebody told me also a reaction from Miller when as you probably know predictably after "The Black Book of Communism," now a year ago I think approximately, it was published in France also *Le livre noir*, "The Black Book on Psychoanalysis," no? Miller's reaction was at least here his old Maoism returned, I was told that at the public talk Miller quoted President Mao: that we should be glad it's a good sign to be attacked by the enemies. It's this kind of... that's my attitude about it. Okay, someone... yes. Yes um, I'm quite a big fan of what you call yourself in *The Metastases of Enjoyment*: you impose a frame of fantasy on the power construction. And I'll be very brief because I have five points. First of all, okay the first point is you cannot impose a frame of fantasy on the power relations because they are—sorry, on the? Power relations. Yes. Because they represent the immanence of fields without transcendental unification, continuity of lines without global centralization. Two: you mention Panopticon. Panopticon means dissymmetry, disequilibrium, difference. That's my point two. My third point: if you think of fantasy as this gap between abstract intention and its actualization, it does not work because the subject himself becomes the principle of his own subjection. And the fourth point is the fact that in power relations by Foucault, in Panopticon in particular, there is a transic conflation between intentionality and finality which completely removes fantasy because the aim of Panopticon is to strengthen the social forces. And my last point is to completely remove the structural principle of your fantasy construction which is the fact that the principle of sovereignty or the relations of sovereignty are completely superseded by relations of discipline. So that is it. Okay, I see your point but all I'm saying is that how should I put it, I mean this in a very not in a critical way but in a way just as a point how we are all caught in this. But what you basically said, this is what I meant by this inherent dictatorial dimension. Basically, are you aware—and again this is not a criticism of you we are all doing it doing this, I just wanted to make it clear what we are doing—that you didn't state arguments, you just confronted a certain position with Foucault's position. For example, when you say sovereignty is today whatever by by disciplinary mechanisms and so on. Well, I don't agree with that. I don't know how to put it in extremely primitive terms. I this is Foucault's thesis with which I don't agree. I claim on the contrary that sovereignty, the way we this term functions in modernity, is strictly an effect, it's the other side of disciplinary mechanisms. I I claim that what Foucault reads as—and on the other hand, I claim that that the passage from premodern to modern disciplinary societies it's not a passage from sovereignty to modernity, it's on the contrary a shift within the notion of sovereignty and within the notion of disciplinary mechanisms and so on and so on. I claim that but that's one point. The other point, I simply didn't get it when you said "Panopticon dissymmetry." Okay, but like here I simply didn't get it because the implication is that I claim somewhere that there is no dissymmetry in Panopticon. So what did you mean by it? Dissymmetry, he who is seen does not see and he who sees is not seen. That is exactly what I mean. But I claim that this is not Foucault's theory of Panopticon, that Foucault's theory of Panopticon is more complex and here I'm on Foucault's side. The Foucault side point is this one—and I think here Foucault got wonderfully the point from Bentham—namely that it's not only he who is seen is I mean a dressed, it's that he who is seen doesn't see where he is seen from, but nonetheless knows or suspects that he is seen from. The beauty of Panopticon is—and this is this is where fantasy enters for me, I will try to—what's the beauty of Panopticon? You you know how it works and first let me express my great admiration for Bentham, a great British humanist progressive dialectical materialist. I'm not making fun. Why? Because with a Bentham—you know I'm not making fun here, you know why I love Bentham and I think it's Foucault's great eternal merit to rehabilitate or to bring back the only thing I was sad about with Foucault is probably a total lack of time whatever you never know, why didn't he Foucault cover also Bentham's theory of fictions more? Why did—okay, but whatever. You know Foucault Bentham's Bentham is the ultimate anal economist, no? Everything should be made useful. And the dirty guy as I am, I found so wonderful in his Panopticon writings detailed like his problem is of course I'm so predictable I'm sorry, his problem is what to do with shit and urine, no? Shit it's easy, prisoners have to garden blah blah blah use as manure. Now what to do with urine? Ah, he found it. You know how Panopticon building—he proposed that the building should be so that on the top it's wider and then it gets narrower. Why? So that prisoners should urinate on the walls and the urine drips down so it's used as a free central heating. You know that... okay, that's something. Okay, but more seriously, the point that Bentham made is that is that the you know how it's structured, around in the center this point of gaze where you're looked upon. But the crucial point is that you see there just as a black hole the point of gaze, but you don't know if is there somebody there or not. And Bentham's very nice point is that there is a double use to this. It's not only economy like we don't have to pay the worker there blah blah, but that's the nice point, that this makes it more threatening. That it's it would be much less oppressive for you to be sure all the time somebody is watching me. If there is just a a place there of the gaze and you don't even know are you watched or not. So that who knows, maybe the guy is there jerking reading pornography, maybe he is doing nothing, maybe he is okay as you would have kindly put it Costas watching the football whatever. But this and so here this is what I would have described as the phantasmatic dimension: that Panopticon works because the central the central gaze is a has this dimension of fantasy, doesn't have even to exist. Ultimately it doesn't have to exist. Not only it doesn't have to exist but how should I put it, your uncertainty—does it exist or not?—is part of its efficiency. So to go further, when you mention this immanence fantasy and so on, now we don't have time to develop it but I again think that I'm maybe even clearer to Foucault than me appears here because for me what I didn't get it is maybe I do, then I should do a proper Stalinist self-critique whatever, do I use the term impose? Because for me—and that's the basic point of my "Plague of Fantasies," that boring introduction into seven ways of fantasy—that fantasy is for me immanent, out there. Fantasy is for me I refer in a primitive way to that, you know, "the truth is out there," X-Files, no? Fantasy is for me immanent, out there... ...state that it is a formal matrix as opposed... sorry? You say it is a formal matrix and another point... Okay, doesn't I? Okay, okay, perfect. Now I will okay, I show to me where I am wrong. I thought that when I say that that I was just paraphrasing Foucault who claims that Panopticon is a kind of a—now my paraphrase—formal matrix when these are now Foucault's words, he said that this same, okay it's my word, structure, principle can be applied then to you know prison, school, hospital, blah blah blah blah. Now what word does then which would then be have been the properly Foucauldian word
desires in us, you cannot enjoy, your access to enjoyment is blocked, the problem is you cannot do it so you go to the psychoanalyst, he liberates... psychoanalysis as promise of successful whatever access to life of pleasures. Today something much stranger happens: "enjoy" or "realize yourself" in all its variations is already the fundamental social injunction, superego injunction. And nonetheless if anything access to enjoyment is even more hindered. So I claim that the paradoxes which if we read Freud closely were already there, we confront—you know this naive misreading that Freud was really only about internalized social norms—this has fallen away. Today I think we are confronting the deadlock at its purest. So in this sense I think quite naively that it is only today that psychoanalysis has come, its time has truly arrived. But on the other hand, another lesson that we should draw—and it's part of that historical reflection—it's also what Lacan was pointing out all the time, that psychoanalysis is a specific social practice which can survive only in certain conditions and there is simply no guarantee that it will disappear—it's also possible that it will simply disappear, psychoanalysis. And again, far from taking this as an element of fear, I think that this is the greatness of psychoanalysis, that it can be so radically historical that it can envisage it can confront the prospect of its own of its own disappearance. So okay, I didn't give you a clear answer but along these lines I think that if at any point there were the best times for psychoanalysis they are today. And my first reaction, which was somebody told me also a reaction from Miller when as you probably know predictably after "The Black Book of Communism," now a year ago I think approximately, it was published in France also *Le livre noir*, "The Black Book on Psychoanalysis," no? Miller's reaction was at least here his old Maoism returned, I was told that at the public talk Miller quoted President Mao: that we should be glad it's a good sign to be attacked by the enemies. It's this kind of... that's my attitude about it. Okay, someone... yes. Yes um, I'm quite a big fan of what you call yourself in *The Metastases of Enjoyment*: you impose a frame of fantasy on the power construction. And I'll be very brief because I have five points. First of all, okay the first point is you cannot impose a frame of fantasy on the power relations because they are—sorry, on the? Power relations. Yes. Because they represent the immanence of fields without transcendental unification, continuity of lines without global centralization. Two: you mention Panopticon. Panopticon means dissymmetry, disequilibrium, difference. That's my point two. My third point: if you think of fantasy as this gap between abstract intention and its actualization, it does not work because the subject himself becomes the principle of his own subjection. And the fourth point is the fact that in power relations by Foucault, in Panopticon in particular, there is a transic conflation between intentionality and finality which completely removes fantasy because the aim of Panopticon is to strengthen the social forces. And my last point is to completely remove the structural principle of your fantasy construction which is the fact that the principle of sovereignty or the relations of sovereignty are completely superseded by relations of discipline. So that is it. Okay, I see your point but all I'm saying is that how should I put it, I mean this in a very not in a critical way but in a way just as a point how we are all caught in this. But what you basically said, this is what I meant by this inherent dictatorial dimension. Basically, are you aware—and again this is not a criticism of you we are all doing it doing this, I just wanted to make it clear what we are doing—that you didn't state arguments, you just confronted a certain position with Foucault's position. For example, when you say sovereignty is today whatever by by disciplinary mechanisms and so on. Well, I don't agree with that. I don't know how to put it in extremely primitive terms. I this is Foucault's thesis with which I don't agree. I claim on the contrary that sovereignty, the way we this term functions in modernity, is strictly an effect, it's the other side of disciplinary mechanisms. I I claim that what Foucault reads as—and on the other hand, I claim that that the passage from premodern to modern disciplinary societies it's not a passage from sovereignty to modernity, it's on the contrary a shift within the notion of sovereignty and within the notion of disciplinary mechanisms and so on and so on. I claim that but that's one point. The other point, I simply didn't get it when you said "Panopticon dissymmetry." Okay, but like here I simply didn't get it because the implication is that I claim somewhere that there is no dissymmetry in Panopticon. So what did you mean by it? Dissymmetry, he who is seen does not see and he who sees is not seen. That is exactly what I mean. But I claim that this is not Foucault's theory of Panopticon, that Foucault's theory of Panopticon is more complex and here I'm on Foucault's side. The Foucault side point is this one—and I think here Foucault got wonderfully the point from Bentham—namely that it's not only he who is seen is I mean a dressed, it's that he who is seen doesn't see where he is seen from, but nonetheless knows or suspects that he is seen from. The beauty of Panopticon is—and this is this is where fantasy enters for me, I will try to—what's the beauty of Panopticon? You you know how it works and first let me express my great admiration for Bentham, a great British humanist progressive dialectical materialist. I'm not making fun. Why? Because with a Bentham—you know I'm not making fun here, you know why I love Bentham and I think it's Foucault's great eternal merit to rehabilitate or to bring back the only thing I was sad about with Foucault is probably a total lack of time whatever you never know, why didn't he Foucault cover also Bentham's theory of fictions more? Why did—okay, but whatever. You know Foucault Bentham's Bentham is the ultimate anal economist, no? Everything should be made useful. And the dirty guy as I am, I found so wonderful in his Panopticon writings detailed like his problem is of course I'm so predictable I'm sorry, his problem is what to do with shit and urine, no? Shit it's easy, prisoners have to garden blah blah blah use as manure. Now what to do with urine? Ah, he found it. You know how Panopticon building—he proposed that the building should be so that on the top it's wider and then it gets narrower. Why? So that prisoners should urinate on the walls and the urine drips down so it's used as a free central heating. You know that... okay, that's something. Okay, but more seriously, the point that Bentham made is that is that the you know how it's structured, around in the center this point of gaze where you're looked upon. But the crucial point is that you see there just as a black hole the point of gaze, but you don't know if is there somebody there or not. And Bentham's very nice point is that there is a double use to this. It's not only economy like we don't have to pay the worker there blah blah, but that's the nice point, that this makes it more threatening. That it's it would be much less oppressive for you to be sure all the time somebody is watching me. If there is just a a place there of the gaze and you don't even know are you watched or not. So that who knows, maybe the guy is there jerking reading pornography, maybe he is doing nothing, maybe he is okay as you would have kindly put it Costas watching the football whatever. But this and so here this is what I would have described as the phantasmatic dimension: that Panopticon works because the central the central gaze is a has this dimension of fantasy, doesn't have even to exist. Ultimately it doesn't have to exist. Not only it doesn't have to exist but how should I put it, your uncertainty—does it exist or not?—is part of its efficiency. So to go further, when you mention this immanence fantasy and so on, now we don't have time to develop it but I again think that I'm maybe even clearer to Foucault than me appears here because for me what I didn't get it is maybe I do, then I should do a proper Stalinist self-critique whatever, do I use the term impose? Because for me—and that's the basic point of my "Plague of Fantasies," that boring introduction into seven ways of fantasy—that fantasy is for me immanent, out there. Fantasy is for me I refer in a primitive way to that, you know, "the truth is out there," X-Files, no? Fantasy is for me immanent, out there... ...state that it is a formal matrix as opposed... sorry? You say it is a formal matrix and another point... Okay, doesn't I? Okay, okay, perfect. Now I will okay, I show to me where I am wrong. I thought that when I say that that I was just paraphrasing Foucault who claims that Panopticon is a kind of a—now my paraphrase—formal matrix when these are now Foucault's words, he said that this same, okay it's my word, structure, principle can be applied then to you know prison, school, hospital, blah blah blah blah. Now what word does then which would then be have been the properly Foucauldian word
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for this sameness, this structuring principle which can be applied here and there and to this, to that? You know what I mean? Yes, um if you read Simon Schaffer's analysis on the construction of automaton intelligence in the 19th century, it is not the fact that we shift the Panopticon. It is the foundation of the construction of intelligence itself. So you cannot say there exists a formal matrix, you know? But there is no formal matrix whatsoever.
for this sameness, this structuring principle which can be applied here and there and to this, to that? You know what I mean? Yes, um if you read Simon Schaffer's analysis on the construction of automaton intelligence in the 19th century, it is not the fact that we shift the Panopticon. It is the foundation of the construction of intelligence itself. So you cannot say there exists a formal matrix, you know? But there is no formal matrix whatsoever.
Slavoj Žižek
But but no, but what it is, what it is this that can be applied here and
But but no, but what it is, what it is this that can be applied here and
unknown
there? Well why do you say, why do you say, you say "impose"? You had a disagreement with my sort of verbal usage of saying imposing. When you say "formal matrix," that means in your view there is some kind of formal institution of the matrix. It does not just appear naturally through contingency, necessity, or agency... No, it can appear in a contingent way, why not? I don't see exclusion... okay we don't get into... okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm so sorry that we cannot go because all the other points, for example the point the... I'm sorry that we don't have time but the most interesting point would have been—there I would really like to debate more, but not now okay, okay—the the point of this how should I put it self-subjection, self-subjection and so on and so on.
there? Well why do you say, why do you say, you say "impose"? You had a disagreement with my sort of verbal usage of saying imposing. When you say "formal matrix," that means in your view there is some kind of formal institution of the matrix. It does not just appear naturally through contingency, necessity, or agency... No, it can appear in a contingent way, why not? I don't see exclusion... okay we don't get into... okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm so sorry that we cannot go because all the other points, for example the point the... I'm sorry that we don't have time but the most interesting point would have been—there I would really like to debate more, but not now okay, okay—the the point of this how should I put it self-subjection, self-subjection and so on and so on.
Slavoj Žižek
Maybe I read Foucault in a naive way here, but here I think that I tend to agree with those who claim that with "Discipline and Punish" and especially the first the first part of "History of Sexuality," he as it were painted himself into a certain corner in this total immanence where how should I call it resistance is always already part of and so on and then to break out he moved into his care care of the self and so on all that stuff. I I see here I see here a problem. But okay whatever, sorry. Can I just link what you just said in relation to your earlier epistemology in relation to the three philosophers, ah sorry, hermeneutical and so on? Because what you said there, if I understood it, was a position that well before Badiou, Max Weber had set at the turn of the century: that within particular philosophical systems of thought you can have immanent critique or a critique of ideology, but when you get to their basic premises or presuppositions—and Weber was attacking Marx's system—in at that level you just have war, you fight. There is no way that you can persuade the other person in relation to the basic presupposition. Which is not very different from what you say. So in relation to the question of my friend here, I mean I just wanted to kind of take your earlier point, the point you've made throughout the as a talk, the talks, a bit further. I mean suppose my friend says that this is my presupposition, I see the whole world from a Foucauldian perspective. Now to the extent that you're taking the position you're taking, you do a bit of immanent critique, you don't understand Foucault well, which is fine and then there can be argument, reasons as you said, you know reason not just impose. But once you get to the premise and the guy says, "I'm a Foucauldian, this is the way that the world works. Why? Because this is my existential decision," that is the Weberian position. Can you answer to that? In other words, does your epistemology allow you—and I mean I totally agree with your epistemology, but it seems to me it has to also accept that other people would take a different premise, that this premise cannot be immanently critiqued according to Weber and your analysis, and at that point we just leave, abandon the field of reasoned argument and basically we fight. No I don't have any problem with that, but also in terms of the with... no I don't have any problem with that because I even think—and here again I agree also with Deleuze and so on—that that the whole history of philosophy is a fight in this sense. In the sense that precisely like how should I put it, Deleuze has this famous statement no like whenever a true philosopher hears somebody approach him and says "Let's debate," the true philosopher "Sorry I have to run" and disappear. You don't debate. All no precisely when you think you have a dialogue it's a total misunderstanding, there is no dialogue between Plato and Aristotle, there is no dialogue between Hegel and Kant and so on. Okay, but let me take it a point further and move on. If that is the case—and you know we agree in terms of this epistemology—then an answer to the Foucauldian "You are imposing things" to the extent that he claims that this is his basic premise, political, existential, and epistemological, is to a certain extent inappropriate because that's what he says he believes in, that's his premise, his presupposition. And indeed certainly within the history of ideas when you have that kind of situation, the person who tends to win this non-argument, this argument which is a non-argument, is the person who tends to be the more authoritative or powerful or kind of sort of senior position. And this is why I think you know your work is being attacked by lots of people because they say, "Okay we disagree with your premises and basically we're not interested in entering an immanent debate with you because we don't like your premises." Okay, but nonetheless two things I would like to add there. First I think nonetheless that your reproach was more refined if I got it correctly, when you said this problem with imposing, your point was not was correct immanent critique of me, your point was not that I'm imposing something on Foucault but that in writing on Panopticon and the way Panopticon relates to the multitude of practices, I there introduce a notion of imposing between a formal matrix and material practices which is not there in Foucault. So it was an immanent critique of like, I didn't get Foucault right. The second point is that nonetheless I see a Stalinist whatever you call it way out. There is one supposition in what you say: it is that each of us has a consistent position like I claim this, you claim that. I'm a Stalinist, I deny this. Yeah. I think that like you know my favorite line from 1984—and we are close to the building which was the model, no?—is you know when when that guy who is the Richard Burton character the the okay the O'Brien, Winston Smith asks his "Tell me, does the Big Brother really exist?" You know what he answers? "It's a wrong question, you don't exist." I mean this is for me a critical when somebody says "I have this position," and here totally crazy, the Freudian answer is "No you don't have it." So then you don't support Badiou? You said earlier Badiou has this position... No no no no no but I support totally Badiou. No I'll put it this way: I think one should balance between—and this is what we de facto are doing I claim—first no no let me make some small statement very brief don't be afraid which maybe you even... here I agree first in this dogmatic Badiouian attitude. I totally agree with, sorry we are back to my beloved Chesterton, who said somewhere and I find it wonderful—I forgot where but no I think it's his "Orthodoxy"—who said that there is no greatest blasphemy abomination than to say "I think this but I'm open to other opinions, I don't really mean it." No, we are
Maybe I read Foucault in a naive way here, but here I think that I tend to agree with those who claim that with "Discipline and Punish" and especially the first the first part of "History of Sexuality," he as it were painted himself into a certain corner in this total immanence where how should I call it resistance is always already part of and so on and then to break out he moved into his care care of the self and so on all that stuff. I I see here I see here a problem. But okay whatever, sorry. Can I just link what you just said in relation to your earlier epistemology in relation to the three philosophers, ah sorry, hermeneutical and so on? Because what you said there, if I understood it, was a position that well before Badiou, Max Weber had set at the turn of the century: that within particular philosophical systems of thought you can have immanent critique or a critique of ideology, but when you get to their basic premises or presuppositions—and Weber was attacking Marx's system—in at that level you just have war, you fight. There is no way that you can persuade the other person in relation to the basic presupposition. Which is not very different from what you say. So in relation to the question of my friend here, I mean I just wanted to kind of take your earlier point, the point you've made throughout the as a talk, the talks, a bit further. I mean suppose my friend says that this is my presupposition, I see the whole world from a Foucauldian perspective. Now to the extent that you're taking the position you're taking, you do a bit of immanent critique, you don't understand Foucault well, which is fine and then there can be argument, reasons as you said, you know reason not just impose. But once you get to the premise and the guy says, "I'm a Foucauldian, this is the way that the world works. Why? Because this is my existential decision," that is the Weberian position. Can you answer to that? In other words, does your epistemology allow you—and I mean I totally agree with your epistemology, but it seems to me it has to also accept that other people would take a different premise, that this premise cannot be immanently critiqued according to Weber and your analysis, and at that point we just leave, abandon the field of reasoned argument and basically we fight. No I don't have any problem with that, but also in terms of the with... no I don't have any problem with that because I even think—and here again I agree also with Deleuze and so on—that that the whole history of philosophy is a fight in this sense. In the sense that precisely like how should I put it, Deleuze has this famous statement no like whenever a true philosopher hears somebody approach him and says "Let's debate," the true philosopher "Sorry I have to run" and disappear. You don't debate. All no precisely when you think you have a dialogue it's a total misunderstanding, there is no dialogue between Plato and Aristotle, there is no dialogue between Hegel and Kant and so on. Okay, but let me take it a point further and move on. If that is the case—and you know we agree in terms of this epistemology—then an answer to the Foucauldian "You are imposing things" to the extent that he claims that this is his basic premise, political, existential, and epistemological, is to a certain extent inappropriate because that's what he says he believes in, that's his premise, his presupposition. And indeed certainly within the history of ideas when you have that kind of situation, the person who tends to win this non-argument, this argument which is a non-argument, is the person who tends to be the more authoritative or powerful or kind of sort of senior position. And this is why I think you know your work is being attacked by lots of people because they say, "Okay we disagree with your premises and basically we're not interested in entering an immanent debate with you because we don't like your premises." Okay, but nonetheless two things I would like to add there. First I think nonetheless that your reproach was more refined if I got it correctly, when you said this problem with imposing, your point was not was correct immanent critique of me, your point was not that I'm imposing something on Foucault but that in writing on Panopticon and the way Panopticon relates to the multitude of practices, I there introduce a notion of imposing between a formal matrix and material practices which is not there in Foucault. So it was an immanent critique of like, I didn't get Foucault right. The second point is that nonetheless I see a Stalinist whatever you call it way out. There is one supposition in what you say: it is that each of us has a consistent position like I claim this, you claim that. I'm a Stalinist, I deny this. Yeah. I think that like you know my favorite line from 1984—and we are close to the building which was the model, no?—is you know when when that guy who is the Richard Burton character the the okay the O'Brien, Winston Smith asks his "Tell me, does the Big Brother really exist?" You know what he answers? "It's a wrong question, you don't exist." I mean this is for me a critical when somebody says "I have this position," and here totally crazy, the Freudian answer is "No you don't have it." So then you don't support Badiou? You said earlier Badiou has this position... No no no no no but I support totally Badiou. No I'll put it this way: I think one should balance between—and this is what we de facto are doing I claim—first no no let me make some small statement very brief don't be afraid which maybe you even... here I agree first in this dogmatic Badiouian attitude. I totally agree with, sorry we are back to my beloved Chesterton, who said somewhere and I find it wonderful—I forgot where but no I think it's his "Orthodoxy"—who said that there is no greatest blasphemy abomination than to say "I think this but I'm open to other opinions, I don't really mean it." No, we are
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all extremely
all extremely
Slavoj Žižek
arrogant. When you write a book, you or me, a nobody, or me from Balkan where you criticize Hegel... sorry, fuck it, you really think I'm more bright than one of the greatest minds of the... I mean there is in acting books an extreme arrogance and it's totally false of this postmodern openness which really means I have an opinion but I don't really agree with it. That's what's called openness, no? Okay. The gentleman there. Um, thank you. Returning to the first question, taking through to the clinic within the Lacanian clinic. In Seminar of *The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis*, if I read him correctly, Lacan actually sort of characterizes the unconscious as being a feature purely of the clinic
arrogant. When you write a book, you or me, a nobody, or me from Balkan where you criticize Hegel... sorry, fuck it, you really think I'm more bright than one of the greatest minds of the... I mean there is in acting books an extreme arrogance and it's totally false of this postmodern openness which really means I have an opinion but I don't really agree with it. That's what's called openness, no? Okay. The gentleman there. Um, thank you. Returning to the first question, taking through to the clinic within the Lacanian clinic. In Seminar of *The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis*, if I read him correctly, Lacan actually sort of characterizes the unconscious as being a feature purely of the clinic
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and emerging only through the relationship of the analyst and the analysand. And then going on to Lacan's statement that the unconscious is the discourse of the Other, I'm interested to understand better where and how this discourse exists and can we or should we impose limits on ourselves when trying to take clinically developed techniques to analyze social and political phenomena? That's a nice question, yeah. Okay, first the first thing, of course here we enter so that I will not get lost I will go...
and emerging only through the relationship of the analyst and the analysand. And then going on to Lacan's statement that the unconscious is the discourse of the Other, I'm interested to understand better where and how this discourse exists and can we or should we impose limits on ourselves when trying to take clinically developed techniques to analyze social and political phenomena? That's a nice question, yeah. Okay, first the first thing, of course here we enter so that I will not get lost I will go...
Slavoj Žižek
one of the domains where there are clear shifts in Lacan's position.
one of the domains where there are clear shifts in Lacan's position.
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Because we should never
Because we should never
Slavoj Žižek
forget that Lacan started as a phenomenologist. And my crazy thesis is that even in the first two, three seminars I think that the predominant attitude is a phenomenological attempt. Which is what, which amounts to claiming that it this phenomenological approach can also be linked to what I refer to as this Benjaminian retroactive logic. In other words, when we have symptoms, symptoms are not effects of some unconscious which is already here, they are like open traces. And true interpretation: you do not simply find already existing meaning. So in this sense interpretation is open. It dep—it depends on the interaction with the analyst what kind of unconscious this futur antérieur will have had or whatever, no? But now I just doubt is it possible to formulate this outside earth, this phenomenological frame? Namely this idea that unconscious never is, it's always will have been. It is always something reconstructed, but the moment it is reconstructed it no longer is unconscious. That's a that's a... to clarify this I claim that the first thing to do is to dispel the myth
forget that Lacan started as a phenomenologist. And my crazy thesis is that even in the first two, three seminars I think that the predominant attitude is a phenomenological attempt. Which is what, which amounts to claiming that it this phenomenological approach can also be linked to what I refer to as this Benjaminian retroactive logic. In other words, when we have symptoms, symptoms are not effects of some unconscious which is already here, they are like open traces. And true interpretation: you do not simply find already existing meaning. So in this sense interpretation is open. It dep—it depends on the interaction with the analyst what kind of unconscious this futur antérieur will have had or whatever, no? But now I just doubt is it possible to formulate this outside earth, this phenomenological frame? Namely this idea that unconscious never is, it's always will have been. It is always something reconstructed, but the moment it is reconstructed it no longer is unconscious. That's a that's a... to clarify this I claim that the first thing to do is to dispel the myth
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of immediacy of unconscious, as if we reflect but unconscious is something more primitive, non-reflected, basic. I think that if anything unconscious is it's the moment of reflection. For example, to give you a simple example: we all know what is... this is how I understand Lacan's statement sometimes that not only Cogito but even the Kantian transcendental subject of self-consciousness is the subject of the unconscious. What is Kant's point about reflexivity? It's that we never simply have a position. We as humans are also always minimally responsible for a position in the sense that I never, for example, Kant's classical example from ethics: I never can say "Oh I didn't want to betray you but then that woman blah blah too beautiful I couldn't resist it." No, it is that you decided, you admitted the causes to determine you, but you reflexively admit the cause. In other words, as Lac—Lacan puts it very nicely, we never simply desire. We also desire to desire something or desire not to desire. And to give you a like simple example: aren't there people whom we, this is a nice Hollywood expression, isn't the whole point of Hollywood bad guys that we hate them but we love to hate them? You know like the problem is not do you hate me or not, the problem is do you love to hate me or do you hate to hate me? Or it goes also the other way around: what is the dimension of femme fatale in film noir? The detective loves her but he hates to love her. This is why you have to kill her but that's another story. What I want to say is that where is here the unconscious? Let's say I hate you. What I am unconscious of is that I love to hate you. So unconscious
of immediacy of unconscious, as if we reflect but unconscious is something more primitive, non-reflected, basic. I think that if anything unconscious is it's the moment of reflection. For example, to give you a simple example: we all know what is... this is how I understand Lacan's statement sometimes that not only Cogito but even the Kantian transcendental subject of self-consciousness is the subject of the unconscious. What is Kant's point about reflexivity? It's that we never simply have a position. We as humans are also always minimally responsible for a position in the sense that I never, for example, Kant's classical example from ethics: I never can say "Oh I didn't want to betray you but then that woman blah blah too beautiful I couldn't resist it." No, it is that you decided, you admitted the causes to determine you, but you reflexively admit the cause. In other words, as Lac—Lacan puts it very nicely, we never simply desire. We also desire to desire something or desire not to desire. And to give you a like simple example: aren't there people whom we, this is a nice Hollywood expression, isn't the whole point of Hollywood bad guys that we hate them but we love to hate them? You know like the problem is not do you hate me or not, the problem is do you love to hate me or do you hate to hate me? Or it goes also the other way around: what is the dimension of femme fatale in film noir? The detective loves her but he hates to love her. This is why you have to kill her but that's another story. What I want to say is that where is here the unconscious? Let's say I hate you. What I am unconscious of is that I love to hate you. So unconscious
Slavoj Žižek
is this very reflexivity of my unconscious is not in the immediate emotion. Unconscious is this the way I relate to my unconscious is not my desire but the way I desire my desire, the way I relate to my desire, so it's no immediacy. But to more interesting to the crucial point: I will try to give a brief answer that I'm struggling with. I first this answer: is it legitimate to apply psychoanalytic categories like obsessional neurosis and so on which were clearly elaborated apropos of individual cases to social phenomena? Like dot Freud's unfortunate formula "Religion is a collective obsessional neurosis" and so on. And I also concede you another point that even if we accept what I said before to the answer to the first I think question, even if we accept that psychoanalysis needs that its its immanent part the general social reflection, then it's still a legitimate question, but are we allowed there to do it with the
is this very reflexivity of my unconscious is not in the immediate emotion. Unconscious is this the way I relate to my unconscious is not my desire but the way I desire my desire, the way I relate to my desire, so it's no immediacy. But to more interesting to the crucial point: I will try to give a brief answer that I'm struggling with. I first this answer: is it legitimate to apply psychoanalytic categories like obsessional neurosis and so on which were clearly elaborated apropos of individual cases to social phenomena? Like dot Freud's unfortunate formula "Religion is a collective obsessional neurosis" and so on. And I also concede you another point that even if we accept what I said before to the answer to the first I think question, even if we accept that psychoanalysis needs that its its immanent part the general social reflection, then it's still a legitimate question, but are we allowed there to do it with the
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same terms that we and so on. Okay, my answer would have been the following one. First, I reject
same terms that we and so on. Okay, my answer would have been the following one. First, I reject
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here the standard easy way to squeeze out, even in Lacan you find it sometimes, which is to say "Oh but the lesson of psychoanalysis is that precisely we are never purely individuals, that as individuals we are already constituted through a minimum social network interaction with family and so on and so on." I think this is a too easy way out. I think that—why?—because these individual interactions and so on is not the same as the social field itself. It's still focused... okay. My conclusion my reply would have been the following one. The only way out—and this I think is what Lacan provides with the notion of the big other—the big other is this social field. In the sense of as I tried to develop in some classes here the first talks, the big other is not the
here the standard easy way to squeeze out, even in Lacan you find it sometimes, which is to say "Oh but the lesson of psychoanalysis is that precisely we are never purely individuals, that as individuals we are already constituted through a minimum social network interaction with family and so on and so on." I think this is a too easy way out. I think that—why?—because these individual interactions and so on is not the same as the social field itself. It's still focused... okay. My conclusion my reply would have been the following one. The only way out—and this I think is what Lacan provides with the notion of the big other—the big other is this social field. In the sense of as I tried to develop in some classes here the first talks, the big other is not the
Slavoj Žižek
majority of us, I don't know, oh my god sorry, don't urinate in public. It's "one does not urinate in public," this kind of you know this anonymous authority. But now I come to the crucial point. It is here one should move one step beyond those who in the tradition of Émile Durkheim and so on simply oppose the level of individual psychological interaction with the level of anonymous authority. It's not enough to say that social phenomena, in this case social ideological phenomena, cannot be reduced, that they have their own objective autonomy. As Durkheim said, they are objective facts, they cannot be reduced to our states and so on and so on. The point is that in order to be efficient they had to be experienced by subjects as objective facts. No you know what I mean? That's the difference between "most of us don't urinate in public." I myself must experience this as in the guise of "one," as social objectivity has to exist for you as such. And one of the definitions of madness, psychosis for Lacan is that precisely you are not able to do this, is that this objective "one," big other, gets subjectivized. This is then the paranoiac particular and so on and so on. So I think that the psychoanalytic answer here is that—and Lacan is no, Lacan is here—let's
majority of us, I don't know, oh my god sorry, don't urinate in public. It's "one does not urinate in public," this kind of you know this anonymous authority. But now I come to the crucial point. It is here one should move one step beyond those who in the tradition of Émile Durkheim and so on simply oppose the level of individual psychological interaction with the level of anonymous authority. It's not enough to say that social phenomena, in this case social ideological phenomena, cannot be reduced, that they have their own objective autonomy. As Durkheim said, they are objective facts, they cannot be reduced to our states and so on and so on. The point is that in order to be efficient they had to be experienced by subjects as objective facts. No you know what I mean? That's the difference between "most of us don't urinate in public." I myself must experience this as in the guise of "one," as social objectivity has to exist for you as such. And one of the definitions of madness, psychosis for Lacan is that precisely you are not able to do this, is that this objective "one," big other, gets subjectivized. This is then the paranoiac particular and so on and so on. So I think that the psychoanalytic answer here is that—and Lacan is no, Lacan is here—let's
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say something good about Adorno. Adorno was aware in how when
say something good about Adorno. Adorno was aware in how when
Slavoj Žižek
Freud deals with group psychology and so on, he is doing exactly the opposite of his references Le Bon and so on. While for Le Bon and those guys this collective hypnosis or it's a kind of a primordial regressive phenomenon, for Adorno points out that Freud's problem is the opposite one: is that crowd is a highly artificial modern phenomenon and the problem is how does individual how what does it mean to be part of a crowd for your individual structure? That's Freud's problem. It's not an objective description of a crowd, it's a description of how your psychic functioning must change so that you function as a crowd member. So I think that in this way I would be tempted to find maybe a way out along these lines: that in this sense it is legitimate to claim that the objective social dimension is always here, not in this vulgar sense but look at a child he never grows alone, he has to interact but that you become an adult human and so on the moment—again it's not—the
Freud deals with group psychology and so on, he is doing exactly the opposite of his references Le Bon and so on. While for Le Bon and those guys this collective hypnosis or it's a kind of a primordial regressive phenomenon, for Adorno points out that Freud's problem is the opposite one: is that crowd is a highly artificial modern phenomenon and the problem is how does individual how what does it mean to be part of a crowd for your individual structure? That's Freud's problem. It's not an objective description of a crowd, it's a description of how your psychic functioning must change so that you function as a crowd member. So I think that in this way I would be tempted to find maybe a way out along these lines: that in this sense it is legitimate to claim that the objective social dimension is always here, not in this vulgar sense but look at a child he never grows alone, he has to interact but that you become an adult human and so on the moment—again it's not—the
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moment this social
moment this social
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objectivity is for you a subjective fact experienced as such. The moment you experience social norms as something objective mechanically constraining you and so on and so on. And I think the whole problem of Oedipus Oedipal complex and so on is precisely: how can this happen? In the sense of not "there are objective social facts, norms" but how is it that out of interaction of humans
objectivity is for you a subjective fact experienced as such. The moment you experience social norms as something objective mechanically constraining you and so on and so on. And I think the whole problem of Oedipus Oedipal complex and so on is precisely: how can this happen? In the sense of not "there are objective social facts, norms" but how is it that out of interaction of humans
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psychological how is it that they can relate to something as an objective social fact? Maybe this is not all that has to be done but I claim that along these lines psychoanalysis can do something. And why is this interesting? Because people usually focus only on the opposite phenomenon like the idea is: you are a madman if you fully identify with this social anonymous authority.
psychological how is it that they can relate to something as an objective social fact? Maybe this is not all that has to be done but I claim that along these lines psychoanalysis can do something. And why is this interesting? Because people usually focus only on the opposite phenomenon like the idea is: you are a madman if you fully identify with this social anonymous authority.
Slavoj Žižek
Like imagine in communist countries somebody even in private speaking the official jargon, you would say he is overidentified, he is crazy. But I claim that madness is also even worse the opposite phenomenon which is that in order not to be mad you must relate to this objective authority but at the same time not identify with it, how should I put it? That's the whole problem. Okay but I got lost here... The last few weeks you've talked about ethical acts and events, and you in the second week talked about the event as kind of structural torsion. And I just wondered today you were talking about the universal and the singular. I wondered if you could just clarify and go to basic level the difference between Lacan's typology of an ethics of desire and Badiou's typology of an ethics of truth, and how an *acte-symptôme* is different from an event or sublimation from a truth process, and Lacan's ethics is a non-universal ethics and Badiou's is a universal ethics. And they seem to be both privileging either the singular or the universal. And I just wondered if you could say something... if you think it's relevant at all or what the differences are. Oh my god. Here now the first thing would be to ask Peter Hallward to leave so that I'm not embarrassed. No, let me now this is how should I put it, I it is possible in a first approach to oppose in this way Badiou and Lacan. But I think the moment we look at things closer it gets much more much more much more complex because sorry can you start with the first part of your question which? Um, the ethics of desire and the ethics of truth. Um one is an epistemological break and the other one is traumatic. And I just wondered what is the difference because you use ethical act *ex nihilo* you've mentioned it in relation to revolution yesterday and you've talked about the structural implications of you said that the event is a structural torsion at some point and I just wonder what is the difference? Yeah, yeah. No, the first when you said the ethics of desire, yeah. Now the first thing to do here I think would be—and Badiou is here also very clear—would be to problematize it when you say "ethics of desire." Okay, let's not forget that it's only in one seminar that Lacan develops this: in "Ethics" seminar. And as some good readers of Lacan didn't fail to notice, the big formula there, "do not ne pas céder sur son désir," do not blah blah blah is a how should I put it now I will try to appear more learned that I am, it's a hapax, only one, you know, it's a universality which happens only once in the sense that what the strange thing is about it how other Lacan's big formulas—desire is desire of the other, blah blah—all of them are a kind of a theoretical real: they return in new guises, each time given a different maybe even opposite reading, while here it's interesting how Lacan does not return to it. It is mentioned just once—okay two times to be precise—in the last chapter of "Ethics" seminar and then Lacan never returns to it. My answer here is very simple: that "Ethics" is a very problematic seminar of passage, far from being a kind of Lacan's ultimate achievement. I think that it's a position of formulate this pure symbolic ethics of desire. I say even if Lacan speaks about the thing, I say symbolic ethics, because you remember when Lacan refers to the act of Antigone, she she always repeats how: what is she faithful in? Polynices. Not his unique but his name, his name. What all in a it's a kind of a pure ethics of signifier, if you want. So although again although ethic psychoanalysis ethics of psychoanalysis is usually celebrated as the breakthrough towards the real, nonetheless the ethics there is ethics of desire, it's also the ethics in this sense: the ethics of the purity of desire. I think that Antigone is celebrated as a kind of a purifying it to the minimum of fidelity, just fidelity to the signifying mark. And I think that the great breakthrough is there Seminar where at the end—remember—I think it's the end of the last of the one before the last paragraph, when Lacan says "le désir de l'analyste" the the desire of the analyst is not a pure desire. Now as I always repeat, whenever Lacan has these negations, the question to be asked is always: but who is the idiot who claims that the desire of the analyst is a pure desire? There is only one answer: Lacan himself where in the "Ethics of Psychoanalysis." That's the thesis there, no? So my point would have been that ah there is then another problem here: for Lacan in "Ethics" it's desire, later Lacan moves this is already a dogma from desire to drive. What I claim is that what comes together with this drive—this shift from desire to drive involves a very interesting which is very close to me, I'm an old romantic blah blah, theoretical shift in the status of love. Insofar as Lacan becomes remains this ethics of at the level of the ethics of desire, love is ultimately dismissed as an imaginary illusion and so on and so on, narcissistic: you love you love your the small your double, ego ideal, whatever. So love is dismissed as imaginary. All of a sudden with the shift to drive, love becomes the opposite: access to the real. And here I think the question of how to read Lacan, how to approach Lacan to Badiou should be answered. I think that the Badiouian critique of Lacan—which is basically one of the aspects that and I'm here self-critical this part of Badiou's and Badiouian's critique of me I accept—that there is some element in—but I think this is precisely the bad Lacan if you want of "Ethics of Psychoanalysis"—you know this basically conservative idea: in our everyday lives we live immersed in imaginary symbolic illusions. Then from time to time we can have this traversing the fantasy, you enter as Lacan refers to Antigone this Greek term Ate, the forbidden domain, then the morning after you return... you know as if truth is some ah transgressive moment of whatever can be, you know, you enter the netherworld, you see the naked woman, whatever. Okay let's not go into it, but you know what I mean, no? And I think that if anything happens later with drive with its repetition, fidelity and so on, it's precisely that you that you no longer have this transgressive model of of ethics. And there I think a link becomes possible with Badiou, which is why again Badiou is right when he speaks about these four generic truth procedures and categorizes psychoanalysis as part of the procedure of as part of the love, puts it into love. I think that love for me means precisely true love: drive enters symbolic order and so on and so on. So again it's a that... so now I want just since we don't have time to go into all of it to draw attention to one crucial fact here, which also involved in the polemics between me and Ernesto Laclau—but I want to use this for a more general statement—it's popular to propose this model, I notice again and again, that for Lacan—to cut a long story short—the thing is the impossible incestuous object. Then comes this cheap pseudo-Lacanian wisdom: but the primordial object is always lost, what we get are only the fragmentary remainders of the thing and these remainders are object small a, and then the sublimation means object small a objects are elevated to the level of the thing, that the place of the thing is empty, you get little bits and then Laclau's move—which is a very nice theoretical operation, I appreciate it—is to find a establish a link or even a structural identity between this psychoanalytic notion of sublimation as elevating an empirical remainder to the level of the thing, which then becomes object small a, and on the other hand his own notion of hegemony, where a particular feature starts to function as a stand-in for... and now we get to the more boring part, this impossible fullness of society or whatever and so on and so on. Now my point would have been that this logic of "you desire the impossible, you don't get it, the thing is originally lost, all you get are fragments which then you elevate into stand-ins for the impossible lost object," I claim that this is the logic of desire. I claim that the logic of drive is totally different. In what sense? And here we even come—don't kill me if I will pronounce the name—to the Buddhist topic. I I know that I am calling the the devil so... okay. Namely when Lacan apparently in a paradoxical way claims that defines object small a, objet petit a, as the object-cause of desire, and then he also says that the drive circulates around the object small a. So okay let me ask the very naive stupid question: what then is the difference? And this is a crucial question I think it wasn't clear even to Lacan in Seminar because Miller at some point there I don't know in Seminar asks this question: object small a in desire in drive. And my impression is that Lacan is bluffing, he goes a little bit here and there and then he asks Miller, "Did I make things clear?" And Miller answers like *chiaroscuro* a little bit, no? I think that the formula is very simple, radical one: desire is
Like imagine in communist countries somebody even in private speaking the official jargon, you would say he is overidentified, he is crazy. But I claim that madness is also even worse the opposite phenomenon which is that in order not to be mad you must relate to this objective authority but at the same time not identify with it, how should I put it? That's the whole problem. Okay but I got lost here... The last few weeks you've talked about ethical acts and events, and you in the second week talked about the event as kind of structural torsion. And I just wondered today you were talking about the universal and the singular. I wondered if you could just clarify and go to basic level the difference between Lacan's typology of an ethics of desire and Badiou's typology of an ethics of truth, and how an *acte-symptôme* is different from an event or sublimation from a truth process, and Lacan's ethics is a non-universal ethics and Badiou's is a universal ethics. And they seem to be both privileging either the singular or the universal. And I just wondered if you could say something... if you think it's relevant at all or what the differences are. Oh my god. Here now the first thing would be to ask Peter Hallward to leave so that I'm not embarrassed. No, let me now this is how should I put it, I it is possible in a first approach to oppose in this way Badiou and Lacan. But I think the moment we look at things closer it gets much more much more much more complex because sorry can you start with the first part of your question which? Um, the ethics of desire and the ethics of truth. Um one is an epistemological break and the other one is traumatic. And I just wondered what is the difference because you use ethical act *ex nihilo* you've mentioned it in relation to revolution yesterday and you've talked about the structural implications of you said that the event is a structural torsion at some point and I just wonder what is the difference? Yeah, yeah. No, the first when you said the ethics of desire, yeah. Now the first thing to do here I think would be—and Badiou is here also very clear—would be to problematize it when you say "ethics of desire." Okay, let's not forget that it's only in one seminar that Lacan develops this: in "Ethics" seminar. And as some good readers of Lacan didn't fail to notice, the big formula there, "do not ne pas céder sur son désir," do not blah blah blah is a how should I put it now I will try to appear more learned that I am, it's a hapax, only one, you know, it's a universality which happens only once in the sense that what the strange thing is about it how other Lacan's big formulas—desire is desire of the other, blah blah—all of them are a kind of a theoretical real: they return in new guises, each time given a different maybe even opposite reading, while here it's interesting how Lacan does not return to it. It is mentioned just once—okay two times to be precise—in the last chapter of "Ethics" seminar and then Lacan never returns to it. My answer here is very simple: that "Ethics" is a very problematic seminar of passage, far from being a kind of Lacan's ultimate achievement. I think that it's a position of formulate this pure symbolic ethics of desire. I say even if Lacan speaks about the thing, I say symbolic ethics, because you remember when Lacan refers to the act of Antigone, she she always repeats how: what is she faithful in? Polynices. Not his unique but his name, his name. What all in a it's a kind of a pure ethics of signifier, if you want. So although again although ethic psychoanalysis ethics of psychoanalysis is usually celebrated as the breakthrough towards the real, nonetheless the ethics there is ethics of desire, it's also the ethics in this sense: the ethics of the purity of desire. I think that Antigone is celebrated as a kind of a purifying it to the minimum of fidelity, just fidelity to the signifying mark. And I think that the great breakthrough is there Seminar where at the end—remember—I think it's the end of the last of the one before the last paragraph, when Lacan says "le désir de l'analyste" the the desire of the analyst is not a pure desire. Now as I always repeat, whenever Lacan has these negations, the question to be asked is always: but who is the idiot who claims that the desire of the analyst is a pure desire? There is only one answer: Lacan himself where in the "Ethics of Psychoanalysis." That's the thesis there, no? So my point would have been that ah there is then another problem here: for Lacan in "Ethics" it's desire, later Lacan moves this is already a dogma from desire to drive. What I claim is that what comes together with this drive—this shift from desire to drive involves a very interesting which is very close to me, I'm an old romantic blah blah, theoretical shift in the status of love. Insofar as Lacan becomes remains this ethics of at the level of the ethics of desire, love is ultimately dismissed as an imaginary illusion and so on and so on, narcissistic: you love you love your the small your double, ego ideal, whatever. So love is dismissed as imaginary. All of a sudden with the shift to drive, love becomes the opposite: access to the real. And here I think the question of how to read Lacan, how to approach Lacan to Badiou should be answered. I think that the Badiouian critique of Lacan—which is basically one of the aspects that and I'm here self-critical this part of Badiou's and Badiouian's critique of me I accept—that there is some element in—but I think this is precisely the bad Lacan if you want of "Ethics of Psychoanalysis"—you know this basically conservative idea: in our everyday lives we live immersed in imaginary symbolic illusions. Then from time to time we can have this traversing the fantasy, you enter as Lacan refers to Antigone this Greek term Ate, the forbidden domain, then the morning after you return... you know as if truth is some ah transgressive moment of whatever can be, you know, you enter the netherworld, you see the naked woman, whatever. Okay let's not go into it, but you know what I mean, no? And I think that if anything happens later with drive with its repetition, fidelity and so on, it's precisely that you that you no longer have this transgressive model of of ethics. And there I think a link becomes possible with Badiou, which is why again Badiou is right when he speaks about these four generic truth procedures and categorizes psychoanalysis as part of the procedure of as part of the love, puts it into love. I think that love for me means precisely true love: drive enters symbolic order and so on and so on. So again it's a that... so now I want just since we don't have time to go into all of it to draw attention to one crucial fact here, which also involved in the polemics between me and Ernesto Laclau—but I want to use this for a more general statement—it's popular to propose this model, I notice again and again, that for Lacan—to cut a long story short—the thing is the impossible incestuous object. Then comes this cheap pseudo-Lacanian wisdom: but the primordial object is always lost, what we get are only the fragmentary remainders of the thing and these remainders are object small a, and then the sublimation means object small a objects are elevated to the level of the thing, that the place of the thing is empty, you get little bits and then Laclau's move—which is a very nice theoretical operation, I appreciate it—is to find a establish a link or even a structural identity between this psychoanalytic notion of sublimation as elevating an empirical remainder to the level of the thing, which then becomes object small a, and on the other hand his own notion of hegemony, where a particular feature starts to function as a stand-in for... and now we get to the more boring part, this impossible fullness of society or whatever and so on and so on. Now my point would have been that this logic of "you desire the impossible, you don't get it, the thing is originally lost, all you get are fragments which then you elevate into stand-ins for the impossible lost object," I claim that this is the logic of desire. I claim that the logic of drive is totally different. In what sense? And here we even come—don't kill me if I will pronounce the name—to the Buddhist topic. I I know that I am calling the the devil so... okay. Namely when Lacan apparently in a paradoxical way claims that defines object small a, objet petit a, as the object-cause of desire, and then he also says that the drive circulates around the object small a. So okay let me ask the very naive stupid question: what then is the difference? And this is a crucial question I think it wasn't clear even to Lacan in Seminar because Miller at some point there I don't know in Seminar asks this question: object small a in desire in drive. And my impression is that Lacan is bluffing, he goes a little bit here and there and then he asks Miller, "Did I make things clear?" And Miller answers like *chiaroscuro* a little bit, no? I think that the formula is very simple, radical one: desire is
unknown
still desire for the impossible thing and then okay the thing is always lost blah blah blah you get fragments. What happens in drive is not simply that you accept that the thing is lost and that instead of aiming at the object you just circulate around the object small a. Like that's how it is usually described, no? That desire is always ultimately melancholic in the sense of you mourn the object is always lost you just get from one an *ersatz* to the other. Drive is often described as just this shift where you accept it, "Okay, what then if there is no thing and we just find pleasure
still desire for the impossible thing and then okay the thing is always lost blah blah blah you get fragments. What happens in drive is not simply that you accept that the thing is lost and that instead of aiming at the object you just circulate around the object small a. Like that's how it is usually described, no? That desire is always ultimately melancholic in the sense of you mourn the object is always lost you just get from one an *ersatz* to the other. Drive is often described as just this shift where you accept it, "Okay, what then if there is no thing and we just find pleasure
Slavoj Žižek
in this circulate around?" But I think we should make a step further. Drive—the true object of drive is the very loss. Drive—the difference between drive and desire is that for desire loss loss is a structural condition: the object is lost, you run after the but I think that drive is ultimately the zero level of drive is this pushing away itself, the object of... okay I'll put it this way: in both cases the object is lost,
in this circulate around?" But I think we should make a step further. Drive—the true object of drive is the very loss. Drive—the difference between drive and desire is that for desire loss loss is a structural condition: the object is lost, you run after the but I think that drive is ultimately the zero level of drive is this pushing away itself, the object of... okay I'll put it this way: in both cases the object is lost,
unknown
but for desire you run after the lost object and then you made all these deep shitty metaphysical discoveries: "but every object is metonymy of a loss" and so on and so on. But in drive something different happens: the object of your desire in a naive sense as goal is loss itself. What if loss itself, pushing away negativity, brings pleasure? I think desire—drive is a much more radical gesture. So to
but for desire you run after the lost object and then you made all these deep shitty metaphysical discoveries: "but every object is metonymy of a loss" and so on and so on. But in drive something different happens: the object of your desire in a naive sense as goal is loss itself. What if loss itself, pushing away negativity, brings pleasure? I think desire—drive is a much more radical gesture. So to
Slavoj Žižek
call the devil, in Buddhist terms, drive would have been the move I claim, that would be the only—you can say if you are deep into Buddhism it's nonsense but if we are looking for any kind of unity in the sense of let's find a common language—then I claim the only logic of drive in the terms of Buddhism would have been the the push to fall from Nirvana back into this fall, which is why I claim Bodhisattva could you know Bodhisattva the one who was up there but says "No no, I care too much for people, I want to return," no? What if you want to return without caring for other people? What you just want to screw things up and return? That would be drive. So it's something much more radical. Okay, I got lost here now a little bit but I think that this even then brings us to a possible I mean dialogue with Badiou. I'm well aware of the obvious differences that can be made, no? And I will not go now into this problem of death drive, truth and so on and so on. But what I nonetheless claiming is that what they share is nonetheless this idea of singular universality in to put it very simply this idea that taking side, partiality, one-sidedness... how they both share I'm tempted to say a Leninist problem which is: how to think together the fact that of radical engagement, the fact that engagement, to be one-sided, is not an obstacle to truth but the only way to truth, how to share this with nonetheless sticking to the universal notion of truth? That is to say there are people, existentialists, who claim "Yes, truth is one-sided," but then they screw it up with this "You know this means that each of us has his own partial truth which cannot be... you know my truth is to screw in this way, yours is to eat pineapples with cream, whatever." But no: how is it possible to think universal truth and nonetheless one-sided? How to think this cut, one-sidedness as inherent to universality? Here I see a way. So again I hope that you will not accuse me simply of being confused. I didn't precisely want to give you the standard answer, which is "Yes these are the differences." You know that would have been what I tried to avoid when I spoke about dictatorship, no? Like Lacan and Badiou share this and this but at this level differences begin. That's the most boring part. The only thing where it interest me is by accepting that they are totally different to find some magic how should I put it possibilities of a kind of a short circuit. Just to move on to politics a little bit. I wonder if you can elaborate a bit more this statement you made according to which capitalism is the real and/or functions as the real. What do you mean by it? Do you mean that capitalism is so overbearing that it will inevitably subsume every pre-capitalist corporal formation? Or else do you mean that it functions as a sort of formal matrix within which we are interpolated and/or obliged to to talk and to discuss politics, you know? And the opposite would be—or the opposite view would be—that if that is so, if capitalism is this sort of formal matrix which interpolates us all, then to move on to an oppositional political standpoint would mean to uh speak outside of capitalism or to you know try to get at some sort of universal truth that's completely opposed to these uh framework of capitalism. Uh... [laughs] Sorry, it's in my nature to make a extremely friendly, loving, bad taste remark: how much did Ernesto Laclau pay you to ask me this question? [laughter] Okay. No, let's go—at the Latin American connection, I hope he paid you with some devalued Latin American inflated money, screw them I mean. Okay, quite seriously, I see your point. I would say what I don't—first, we should never forget that and here not so much with Ernesto he knows here he got the lesson of the real, but with Judith Butler... but for Lacan "real" as "impossible" is not something you know fixed that you cannot change, you can intervene into the real. Lacan emphasized this, so this is a big misunderstanding where I say "this is real" when I said for example "Oedipal complex castration is real," then I hear "Oh you mean it's transhistorical, we can't do anything." No, "real" is historically very specified. You can have a real of a certain situation. Which means it's it's its untouchable, what always returns within this situation. But which doesn't mean you cannot change the situation itself because as Lacan says the whole problem, the whole wager of psychoanalysis—otherwise psychoanalytic practice doesn't have any meaning—is that you can with symbolic you can intervene into the real. So let's go now to this: what I don't get it is why if we say capitalism is real—and of course I meant it more in the second sense, a formal matrix—why real? Why not symbolic? Precisely because and here I refer to Badiou and so on his notion which I find very productive of capitalism as worldless, as no longer a world. World precisely in the sense of—at the same time in the sense that Badiou develops now of "Logics of Worlds," I mean of world—and at the same time in a more naive sense of civilization. Capitalism for me is precisely what can return in all possible symbolic universes in the sense that as I developed: you can have liberal, Chinese communist capitalism, whatever you want. Again, what I don't get is why do you draw from this the conclusion that we have to have an absolute outside? Now I'm asking this: what I maybe I got something wrong. Well, I mean, one possible—one possible argument would be that you know if the case is that capitalism acts as a as a framework, the only way one can declare a universal truth, an oppositional universal truth, would be if one occupies the standpoint of one who doesn't have a a world. You know, if if one is not part of the world. You use—you use such terms as "part of no part" or "universal exception." Yeah, yeah, yeah. So—and you have said in in some of your writings, you have said that the universal declaration is universal insofar as it comes from the position of those who are absolutely excluded. Does that mean—I mean, one is tempted to... Yeah, but this "this absolute..." but as Badiou would have developed it here. But okay, that would have been my answer. Nonetheless as Badiou develops using a Freudian term, nonetheless this point of outside it's an inherent outside is as Badiou put it the symptomal torsion. It's the element which, as he put it this "part of no part," blah blah, which means "inside" but without marking a specific place "inside" and so on and so on. In other words, again the presupposition of what you are saying is that this inside is—now I'm speaking like Ernesto Laclau—is a non-antagonistic flat inside. But what if this real as inside is a place of a certain radical antagonism which produces, generates this part of no part, an opening? So that in this sense again, I claim that in this sense when I say capitalism is real I don't mean it as a matrix in this—and here I agree with those who defend Foucault, not in the authentically Foucauldian but in a bad Foucauldian pseudo-Foucauldian sense of you know like what some misreading of "Discipline and Punish" or or "History of Sexuality" volume one can give: like we have a matrix of capitalism which means every opposition to it is in advance incorporated, taken into account, you cannot... No, I think this is this is not the real. The real is precisely for me radically antagonistic in the sense that it's all the time generating this place from where you can—how should I put it?—it's ah it's the topology is that it's outside is inside. And I would even say the opposite: that only from the inside you can intervene. Okay let me give you a totally different example which came to my mind but it's even kind of for some Stalinist counter-revolutionary example but which would have worked. You know when Tito split with Stalin in '48, there were now discovered by documents some tendencies in Yugoslav party to simply move more radically to the West. And then you know what was the American message—because that's the other part Stalinist would have loved—then America helped very much in early 50s Yugoslavia preventing Stalin. They—their message to Tito was: "No, if you simply move to us, to the West, the whole effect would have been lost in order to have—we want you to remain communist. You know, we want you to challenge Stalin." Oh, in other words only from the inside it was a real, otherwise it would be simply inscribed into okay the same block structure: East, West, Tito simply moved sides. So it's a very nice paradox where the American—and at that point it was it was not yet it was I don't no it was already in '53 that this happened I remember yes that it was Allen Dulles or who was the foreign minister I think of Eisenhower. Again, the message was: "remain there." Only in this way you can intervene. And this maybe is more important than ever today. Which is why I don't believe in this purely external—that's where I have critique of capitalism, that's where I have some problems with people with whom I was attributed of having sympathies like Sendero Luminoso or whatever, you know this pure outside, no? No I think that only—the paradox is that how should I put it outside the outside of capitalism all these—this would be a nice example of the Lacanian logic of "non-all"—that all outside, outside in the sense of more primitive modes of production, remainders, remainders is always already incorporated. In the sense of supplementary, taken into account. Capitalism has no pro—you cannot undermine capitalism with any outside, I claim. Even I claim ecology. At some point I was stupid enough to I think at the end of "Tarrying with the Negative" to articulate this hope: oh a good really shitty ecological catastrophe. No! Now I'm convinced let's say some mega-ecological catastrophe were to happen. I'm sure it would be immediately converted into a new field of capitalist investment and so on and so on. It's the intervention comes only from the inside. So in this sense I would have complicated the things that... and incidentally sorry... oh I talked too much, I stop. Okay please. I wonder if you can say... to to answer two questions and join them up. Um, say a little more about how you think about the relation between ethics and politics. That you devoted early on quite a bit of time talking about ethics but always in the Lacanian context. And I remember in fact the example you gave of the woman in the Soviet Union under Stalin who refused to say anything except a fairly simple notion of what the truth was regarding the medical treatment of our beloved Zhdanov, yeah. And and that that you seemed to be very sympathetic to as an ethical paradigm. But it seems that it's quite a long way from that ethics of truth-telling and responsibility to the dictatorship of the proletariat. And I wonder if you could sketch in some of the ways that you link those. My god. I would have to go too far... okay let me put it in this way. I think that again this is a very nice question, the danger I see is to start answering in too general terms like "it all—it all depends on what on what we already presuppose." For example, what worries me is that I claim that this is my distrust into ethics, that do not we live today in the age of the war on terror, human rights and so on, as you Costas developed in your it's the forthcoming book that you gave no, how what we what some people naively call this ethical turn in today's politics, human rights politics, it can be clearly shown how it
call the devil, in Buddhist terms, drive would have been the move I claim, that would be the only—you can say if you are deep into Buddhism it's nonsense but if we are looking for any kind of unity in the sense of let's find a common language—then I claim the only logic of drive in the terms of Buddhism would have been the the push to fall from Nirvana back into this fall, which is why I claim Bodhisattva could you know Bodhisattva the one who was up there but says "No no, I care too much for people, I want to return," no? What if you want to return without caring for other people? What you just want to screw things up and return? That would be drive. So it's something much more radical. Okay, I got lost here now a little bit but I think that this even then brings us to a possible I mean dialogue with Badiou. I'm well aware of the obvious differences that can be made, no? And I will not go now into this problem of death drive, truth and so on and so on. But what I nonetheless claiming is that what they share is nonetheless this idea of singular universality in to put it very simply this idea that taking side, partiality, one-sidedness... how they both share I'm tempted to say a Leninist problem which is: how to think together the fact that of radical engagement, the fact that engagement, to be one-sided, is not an obstacle to truth but the only way to truth, how to share this with nonetheless sticking to the universal notion of truth? That is to say there are people, existentialists, who claim "Yes, truth is one-sided," but then they screw it up with this "You know this means that each of us has his own partial truth which cannot be... you know my truth is to screw in this way, yours is to eat pineapples with cream, whatever." But no: how is it possible to think universal truth and nonetheless one-sided? How to think this cut, one-sidedness as inherent to universality? Here I see a way. So again I hope that you will not accuse me simply of being confused. I didn't precisely want to give you the standard answer, which is "Yes these are the differences." You know that would have been what I tried to avoid when I spoke about dictatorship, no? Like Lacan and Badiou share this and this but at this level differences begin. That's the most boring part. The only thing where it interest me is by accepting that they are totally different to find some magic how should I put it possibilities of a kind of a short circuit. Just to move on to politics a little bit. I wonder if you can elaborate a bit more this statement you made according to which capitalism is the real and/or functions as the real. What do you mean by it? Do you mean that capitalism is so overbearing that it will inevitably subsume every pre-capitalist corporal formation? Or else do you mean that it functions as a sort of formal matrix within which we are interpolated and/or obliged to to talk and to discuss politics, you know? And the opposite would be—or the opposite view would be—that if that is so, if capitalism is this sort of formal matrix which interpolates us all, then to move on to an oppositional political standpoint would mean to uh speak outside of capitalism or to you know try to get at some sort of universal truth that's completely opposed to these uh framework of capitalism. Uh... [laughs] Sorry, it's in my nature to make a extremely friendly, loving, bad taste remark: how much did Ernesto Laclau pay you to ask me this question? [laughter] Okay. No, let's go—at the Latin American connection, I hope he paid you with some devalued Latin American inflated money, screw them I mean. Okay, quite seriously, I see your point. I would say what I don't—first, we should never forget that and here not so much with Ernesto he knows here he got the lesson of the real, but with Judith Butler... but for Lacan "real" as "impossible" is not something you know fixed that you cannot change, you can intervene into the real. Lacan emphasized this, so this is a big misunderstanding where I say "this is real" when I said for example "Oedipal complex castration is real," then I hear "Oh you mean it's transhistorical, we can't do anything." No, "real" is historically very specified. You can have a real of a certain situation. Which means it's it's its untouchable, what always returns within this situation. But which doesn't mean you cannot change the situation itself because as Lacan says the whole problem, the whole wager of psychoanalysis—otherwise psychoanalytic practice doesn't have any meaning—is that you can with symbolic you can intervene into the real. So let's go now to this: what I don't get it is why if we say capitalism is real—and of course I meant it more in the second sense, a formal matrix—why real? Why not symbolic? Precisely because and here I refer to Badiou and so on his notion which I find very productive of capitalism as worldless, as no longer a world. World precisely in the sense of—at the same time in the sense that Badiou develops now of "Logics of Worlds," I mean of world—and at the same time in a more naive sense of civilization. Capitalism for me is precisely what can return in all possible symbolic universes in the sense that as I developed: you can have liberal, Chinese communist capitalism, whatever you want. Again, what I don't get is why do you draw from this the conclusion that we have to have an absolute outside? Now I'm asking this: what I maybe I got something wrong. Well, I mean, one possible—one possible argument would be that you know if the case is that capitalism acts as a as a framework, the only way one can declare a universal truth, an oppositional universal truth, would be if one occupies the standpoint of one who doesn't have a a world. You know, if if one is not part of the world. You use—you use such terms as "part of no part" or "universal exception." Yeah, yeah, yeah. So—and you have said in in some of your writings, you have said that the universal declaration is universal insofar as it comes from the position of those who are absolutely excluded. Does that mean—I mean, one is tempted to... Yeah, but this "this absolute..." but as Badiou would have developed it here. But okay, that would have been my answer. Nonetheless as Badiou develops using a Freudian term, nonetheless this point of outside it's an inherent outside is as Badiou put it the symptomal torsion. It's the element which, as he put it this "part of no part," blah blah, which means "inside" but without marking a specific place "inside" and so on and so on. In other words, again the presupposition of what you are saying is that this inside is—now I'm speaking like Ernesto Laclau—is a non-antagonistic flat inside. But what if this real as inside is a place of a certain radical antagonism which produces, generates this part of no part, an opening? So that in this sense again, I claim that in this sense when I say capitalism is real I don't mean it as a matrix in this—and here I agree with those who defend Foucault, not in the authentically Foucauldian but in a bad Foucauldian pseudo-Foucauldian sense of you know like what some misreading of "Discipline and Punish" or or "History of Sexuality" volume one can give: like we have a matrix of capitalism which means every opposition to it is in advance incorporated, taken into account, you cannot... No, I think this is this is not the real. The real is precisely for me radically antagonistic in the sense that it's all the time generating this place from where you can—how should I put it?—it's ah it's the topology is that it's outside is inside. And I would even say the opposite: that only from the inside you can intervene. Okay let me give you a totally different example which came to my mind but it's even kind of for some Stalinist counter-revolutionary example but which would have worked. You know when Tito split with Stalin in '48, there were now discovered by documents some tendencies in Yugoslav party to simply move more radically to the West. And then you know what was the American message—because that's the other part Stalinist would have loved—then America helped very much in early 50s Yugoslavia preventing Stalin. They—their message to Tito was: "No, if you simply move to us, to the West, the whole effect would have been lost in order to have—we want you to remain communist. You know, we want you to challenge Stalin." Oh, in other words only from the inside it was a real, otherwise it would be simply inscribed into okay the same block structure: East, West, Tito simply moved sides. So it's a very nice paradox where the American—and at that point it was it was not yet it was I don't no it was already in '53 that this happened I remember yes that it was Allen Dulles or who was the foreign minister I think of Eisenhower. Again, the message was: "remain there." Only in this way you can intervene. And this maybe is more important than ever today. Which is why I don't believe in this purely external—that's where I have critique of capitalism, that's where I have some problems with people with whom I was attributed of having sympathies like Sendero Luminoso or whatever, you know this pure outside, no? No I think that only—the paradox is that how should I put it outside the outside of capitalism all these—this would be a nice example of the Lacanian logic of "non-all"—that all outside, outside in the sense of more primitive modes of production, remainders, remainders is always already incorporated. In the sense of supplementary, taken into account. Capitalism has no pro—you cannot undermine capitalism with any outside, I claim. Even I claim ecology. At some point I was stupid enough to I think at the end of "Tarrying with the Negative" to articulate this hope: oh a good really shitty ecological catastrophe. No! Now I'm convinced let's say some mega-ecological catastrophe were to happen. I'm sure it would be immediately converted into a new field of capitalist investment and so on and so on. It's the intervention comes only from the inside. So in this sense I would have complicated the things that... and incidentally sorry... oh I talked too much, I stop. Okay please. I wonder if you can say... to to answer two questions and join them up. Um, say a little more about how you think about the relation between ethics and politics. That you devoted early on quite a bit of time talking about ethics but always in the Lacanian context. And I remember in fact the example you gave of the woman in the Soviet Union under Stalin who refused to say anything except a fairly simple notion of what the truth was regarding the medical treatment of our beloved Zhdanov, yeah. And and that that you seemed to be very sympathetic to as an ethical paradigm. But it seems that it's quite a long way from that ethics of truth-telling and responsibility to the dictatorship of the proletariat. And I wonder if you could sketch in some of the ways that you link those. My god. I would have to go too far... okay let me put it in this way. I think that again this is a very nice question, the danger I see is to start answering in too general terms like "it all—it all depends on what on what we already presuppose." For example, what worries me is that I claim that this is my distrust into ethics, that do not we live today in the age of the war on terror, human rights and so on, as you Costas developed in your it's the forthcoming book that you gave no, how what we what some people naively call this ethical turn in today's politics, human rights politics, it can be clearly shown how it
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is precisely the worst abuse of the worst politicization of ethics. So if there is one rule is that any direct how should I call it "ethicization" of politics pays immediately the price of the brutal politicization of ethics. And the catch is clear, because when you ethicize politics, sorry, that means when you define this sooner or later means that political struggles are immediately perceived as ethical struggles: good into evil. But since we still remain in politics, this means that this can then justify extremely ruthless politics where the one whom you are fighting is not simply a political opponent but evil and so on and so on. So what I am my solution here which I can only give you the abstract
is precisely the worst abuse of the worst politicization of ethics. So if there is one rule is that any direct how should I call it "ethicization" of politics pays immediately the price of the brutal politicization of ethics. And the catch is clear, because when you ethicize politics, sorry, that means when you define this sooner or later means that political struggles are immediately perceived as ethical struggles: good into evil. But since we still remain in politics, this means that this can then justify extremely ruthless politics where the one whom you are fighting is not simply a political opponent but evil and so on and so on. So what I am my solution here which I can only give you the abstract
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frame
frame
Slavoj Žižek
here would have been the following: first while I of course basically totally accept the big leftist modern leftist—they got the lesson
here would have been the following: first while I of course basically totally accept the big leftist modern leftist—they got the lesson
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of postmodernist critique of human
of postmodernist critique of human
Slavoj Žižek
rights politics as developed among others by a guy sitting on my right now, no?—I accept it. Where I am only not skeptical, it's I am just open in the sense of: you never know how a certain ideological category can work in a specific situation. For example, while accepting the criticism I try to be here more Leninistically flexible. Let's say human rights International Court Hague. Okay, we may be mad at Christopher Hitchens, but I think he did try years ago before certain recent events, a wonderful thing where he just brought the logic to the end. And you remember what was his scandal? A good one still. It was simply to say, "Okay let's go to the end, let's bring Henry Kissinger to Hague." You see how something which you can say now you you see what I mean? You can—it was I'm it's absolutely clear that the whole logic of human rights Hague court was meant as a way to discipline third world countries blah blah blah. But he never said that "let's bring Bush to Hague." I mean it was very easy after Kissinger was gone and even the American Republicans hated him to say "Let's take..." Yeah, but the the paradox is nonetheless how it was a shock. Americans reacted in a totally panic way and I think that the falsity was—the falsity of all it was was was was rendered palpable in a wonderful way. As I quote in my book, like you have in Serbia this absolute madness where the same American diplomats who were putting a pressure on Serbia, "Deliver General Mladić and those sympathetic guys to Hague," my friends from Serbia told me is this madness, the same American diplomats were pushing a pressure on Serbia to sign a non-extradition treaty for the Americans for the
rights politics as developed among others by a guy sitting on my right now, no?—I accept it. Where I am only not skeptical, it's I am just open in the sense of: you never know how a certain ideological category can work in a specific situation. For example, while accepting the criticism I try to be here more Leninistically flexible. Let's say human rights International Court Hague. Okay, we may be mad at Christopher Hitchens, but I think he did try years ago before certain recent events, a wonderful thing where he just brought the logic to the end. And you remember what was his scandal? A good one still. It was simply to say, "Okay let's go to the end, let's bring Henry Kissinger to Hague." You see how something which you can say now you you see what I mean? You can—it was I'm it's absolutely clear that the whole logic of human rights Hague court was meant as a way to discipline third world countries blah blah blah. But he never said that "let's bring Bush to Hague." I mean it was very easy after Kissinger was gone and even the American Republicans hated him to say "Let's take..." Yeah, but the the paradox is nonetheless how it was a shock. Americans reacted in a totally panic way and I think that the falsity was—the falsity of all it was was was was rendered palpable in a wonderful way. As I quote in my book, like you have in Serbia this absolute madness where the same American diplomats who were putting a pressure on Serbia, "Deliver General Mladić and those sympathetic guys to Hague," my friends from Serbia told me is this madness, the same American diplomats were pushing a pressure on Serbia to sign a non-extradition treaty for the Americans for the
unknown
same, the same diplomats. They did sign it actually... they have signed... Yeah but they are fucked up. I mean what can they do I mean, no? But but the price is—this is what you don't get in Western media—immediately after this double pressure there were the elections where basically more right nationalists won. This was, this was what gave this public outrage at this duplicity was one of the big things which gave the push. So when—this was the most West at its most disgusting—when the Western media commented, "You see we gave Serbia a chance to become normal Western blah blah liberal country, unfortunately this dark Balkanic past returned of passions," no they pushed it into it with this. Or to give you know that's my only point. This is the first time I hear you defending
same, the same diplomats. They did sign it actually... they have signed... Yeah but they are fucked up. I mean what can they do I mean, no? But but the price is—this is what you don't get in Western media—immediately after this double pressure there were the elections where basically more right nationalists won. This was, this was what gave this public outrage at this duplicity was one of the big things which gave the push. So when—this was the most West at its most disgusting—when the Western media commented, "You see we gave Serbia a chance to become normal Western blah blah liberal country, unfortunately this dark Balkanic past returned of passions," no they pushed it into it with this. Or to give you know that's my only point. This is the first time I hear you defending
Slavoj Žižek
Serbia in public, that's great. [laughter] No but wait a minute, I think I was very... no no I always even in my darkest anti-Serbian moments I I made it clear that it's not any Serb destiny. I made it very clear. For example, if you take years ago around First World War and before, okay I'll put... of all ex-Yugoslav nations, Serbs were the only ones with what you may call a genuine genuine democratic tradition. Much more than we Slovenes, much more than even Croats and so on. Do you know for example that the Serb constitution when they overthrew the previous when there was that Karađorđević coup... Let's not get into details... No, but sorry can I just finish with the formula? With the formula. My point would have been that that to grasp that my theoretical wager would have been that it is possible to bring—not that if we approach the problem as in this standard way, "Should politics be only ruthless powerplay or do we need some ethical standards?" Okay, I mean if you put it in these stupid terms of course I am for ethical standards. But that's not it. What I am saying, what what interests me and there is that I believe in political suspension of the ethical, but as an ethical act. I claim that there can be a choice inherent to ethics where you have somehow to how should I put it... I believe in inherent politicization politicization of ethics. So I think that I'm not ready to concede to ethics this extra-territorial rights like "Above politics there must be some basic considerations: don't kill, don't torture and so on and so on." Well I don't know, I can imagine situations politically determined where the only ethical act would have been to torture and so on. I don't have any problems with this. When Serbia played Argentina the other day, who did you support? You are asking—and I as I can now I will give you a really evil answer. [laughter] Since my wife is Argentinian, as an anti-feminist not for any nostalgic... I absolutely supported eh Serbia and Montenegro and so on. Okay, it was just to get it back at my wife who was shouting there "Vamos chiquitos, vamos muchachos," screw them I mean no. A good political position... yes. Yes, in your wonderful ambiguous book *Welcome to the Desert of the Real* yesterday, you seem sometimes to leave power out of the equation when talking about for example settler colonialism and indigenous population. You seem to make a kind of a symmetry between the two. Is that correct? Sorry, what do you mean by symmetry? I didn't get it. Are you kind of equating, for example, take the issue of Palestine. Is there a symmetry between, let's say, the Israelis and the Palestinians? No. So how do you justify for example... my second question: why do you not support boycott as an un-German and and do you think that the boycott is an unethical act? Because you said in your book... Ah wait a minute! No no no no no. You mean that boycott which was called some two years ago or when? Academic boycott? Or where do you stand now to the—I don't have a paradox to answer that question. Third, how do you conceptualize in a Lacanian sense the wall that's been built? First the last one which is the easiest. The wall, no it just makes my point which I already make in my *Iraqi Borrowed Kettle* book how this is for me in a way the truth of the fall of the Berlin Wall. That this is the truth... I mean okay it has a specific meaning there, no? Establish identity. But I see a more crazy general lesson which is that it confronts us with the fact that this I think will be globalization. That I made in some of my books this ironic reference to you know when Marx says how people
Serbia in public, that's great. [laughter] No but wait a minute, I think I was very... no no I always even in my darkest anti-Serbian moments I I made it clear that it's not any Serb destiny. I made it very clear. For example, if you take years ago around First World War and before, okay I'll put... of all ex-Yugoslav nations, Serbs were the only ones with what you may call a genuine genuine democratic tradition. Much more than we Slovenes, much more than even Croats and so on. Do you know for example that the Serb constitution when they overthrew the previous when there was that Karađorđević coup... Let's not get into details... No, but sorry can I just finish with the formula? With the formula. My point would have been that that to grasp that my theoretical wager would have been that it is possible to bring—not that if we approach the problem as in this standard way, "Should politics be only ruthless powerplay or do we need some ethical standards?" Okay, I mean if you put it in these stupid terms of course I am for ethical standards. But that's not it. What I am saying, what what interests me and there is that I believe in political suspension of the ethical, but as an ethical act. I claim that there can be a choice inherent to ethics where you have somehow to how should I put it... I believe in inherent politicization politicization of ethics. So I think that I'm not ready to concede to ethics this extra-territorial rights like "Above politics there must be some basic considerations: don't kill, don't torture and so on and so on." Well I don't know, I can imagine situations politically determined where the only ethical act would have been to torture and so on. I don't have any problems with this. When Serbia played Argentina the other day, who did you support? You are asking—and I as I can now I will give you a really evil answer. [laughter] Since my wife is Argentinian, as an anti-feminist not for any nostalgic... I absolutely supported eh Serbia and Montenegro and so on. Okay, it was just to get it back at my wife who was shouting there "Vamos chiquitos, vamos muchachos," screw them I mean no. A good political position... yes. Yes, in your wonderful ambiguous book *Welcome to the Desert of the Real* yesterday, you seem sometimes to leave power out of the equation when talking about for example settler colonialism and indigenous population. You seem to make a kind of a symmetry between the two. Is that correct? Sorry, what do you mean by symmetry? I didn't get it. Are you kind of equating, for example, take the issue of Palestine. Is there a symmetry between, let's say, the Israelis and the Palestinians? No. So how do you justify for example... my second question: why do you not support boycott as an un-German and and do you think that the boycott is an unethical act? Because you said in your book... Ah wait a minute! No no no no no. You mean that boycott which was called some two years ago or when? Academic boycott? Or where do you stand now to the—I don't have a paradox to answer that question. Third, how do you conceptualize in a Lacanian sense the wall that's been built? First the last one which is the easiest. The wall, no it just makes my point which I already make in my *Iraqi Borrowed Kettle* book how this is for me in a way the truth of the fall of the Berlin Wall. That this is the truth... I mean okay it has a specific meaning there, no? Establish identity. But I see a more crazy general lesson which is that it confronts us with the fact that this I think will be globalization. That I made in some of my books this ironic reference to you know when Marx says how people
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communicate among themselves but through commodities and so on. That globalization means the free movement not of people but of commodities. And I think that at the level of the movement of the people globalization will mean more and more of this. I claim that freedom of the market will be more and more reflected in this kind of wall mentality among the population. So no doubt
communicate among themselves but through commodities and so on. That globalization means the free movement not of people but of commodities. And I think that at the level of the movement of the people globalization will mean more and more of this. I claim that freedom of the market will be more and more reflected in this kind of wall mentality among the population. So no doubt
Slavoj Žižek
here. As to—as to... no, I am here even much more critical than it may appear of the Israelis.
here. As to—as to... no, I am here even much more critical than it may appear of the Israelis.
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Which is why, for example, what I don't agree with are those simplistic Israeli liberals who are deeply sympathetic "Oh their heart is burning seeing the Palestinian suffering" blah blah, but if you scratch the surface the implicit presupposition is: it's only a matter of if we were to be a little bit more human, more open and so on. You know, as if it's a matter of a little bit more humanitarian politics, understanding, "don't screw them
Which is why, for example, what I don't agree with are those simplistic Israeli liberals who are deeply sympathetic "Oh their heart is burning seeing the Palestinian suffering" blah blah, but if you scratch the surface the implicit presupposition is: it's only a matter of if we were to be a little bit more human, more open and so on. You know, as if it's a matter of a little bit more humanitarian politics, understanding, "don't screw them
Slavoj Žižek
so much" and so on. I think the problem is more radical. How is that guy called? They published an interview with him in *New Left Review* a year or
so much" and so on. I think the problem is more radical. How is that guy called? They published an interview with him in *New Left Review* a year or
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two ago,
two ago,
Slavoj Žižek
that Israeli historian—I always like this example—who first discovered how Israelis did a little bit of moderate by our post-Yugoslav high standards, but nonetheless ethnic cleansing, burning one or two Palestinian villages to make them escape, and how this was—okay they did it. And first he was the darling of the left: "Oh you see our found left always leftists always like to discover founding crimes," no? Especially since you can do this retroactively in a safe way you don't really lose everything, to just hypocritically regret it, no? But then he—everybody was surprised when his—his point was: "No, we had to do it and the solution would have been to do even more." His idea was that they they should have grabbed the opportunity of throwing all Arabs out and then we would have peace now in the Middle East. Now I claim simply that there is a truth in it. And I'm not saying Israel shouldn't get a state. I'm saying it's really an objective deadlock. Let's not make it easy and say "Oh with a little bit of more humanitarian politics it would be..." but to go back to your boycott question. There, how should I put it? In principle I... I mean it's always this strategic question of collaboration. Like for example, Agamben, United States. Was it a wise thing for him to do that act about which he is now bitter—not bitter that he did it wrong but bitter that it didn't work, cause a movement. You remember when two years ago when Agamben proclaimed that he will no longer enter United States because he refused this what they do to you now: this scanning of your eye all that stuff, fingerprints and so on, claiming this is totalitarian scientific and so on. But then I had a long talk with with Badiou. And Badiou's point was that he was opposed to it, not only because he likes to go to United States, but he told me but like isn't there a problem with it? Like do you know that French authorities for example are doing this for people coming from Africa and so on already for for decades, no? Like all it you know it has a little bit of this "My god when we intellectuals are touched by it all of a sudden..." Okay, my problem my only problem as I put it with that boycott—I am not—for me it's a concrete question. I have two problems. One problem is that nonetheless—and I am absolutely not in any way accepting this absolute victimization of the Jews and so on—but in Europe although I know there is a big distinction Israel, Jews and many of the proponents, even the main, of that boycott were themselves leftist Jews like Steven Rose and so on, no? But nonetheless I think it's too much playing with fire to you know the topic "Boycott the Jews" is a very sensitive topic in Europe. You play with fire too much. Second thing, I although he would probably support the boycott but I am here along the lines of one of the suggestions that Edward Said made. It's the same as with you... Why why boycott? Why not... okay, when I say why not go there and tell the truth? Some of proponents of the boycott would have said, "But you are in this way manipulated. Whatever you say it doesn't matter, what matters more is that by your presence there you give legitimacy." No, I think it's a matter to judge. I'm not so sure about it, frankly. I think it's a matter to judge: yes or no. I'm not so sure. For example, to give you a concrete example which concerns me, maybe you even know it and that's why you ask me a question. I was invited to now and I'm going probably, it's not even sure, maybe now there to the Tel Aviv whatever or Jerusalem I don't know film festival. And I saw where the manipulation is. The manipulation is that after I said conditionally yes, they all of a sudden wanted me to participate at some round tables and so on and so on. I think that if I do what I do is relatively the right thing. I set an absolute condition that the only place where I will appear is the screening of Udi Aloni's film "Forgiveness," which is—I think I even mentioned it—a film whole point of which is that that above on the very ground where Israelis in '49 burned one of the Palestinian villages, they built the irony psychiatric hospital for treatment of shock treatment of those who survived Holocaust. And the thesis of the film is a very nice thesis is that then it's kind of a progressive Stephen King: that the ghosts of the dead Palestinians come and there is this kind of a—it's very nice idea. I mean another my cynical point is that the film in its quality doesn't exactly live to this but the idea is then this kind of a strange solidarity of Holocaust survivors with the Palestinians there. Like they recognize themselves in this underground. Sorry, to make a statement like this today in Israel, I was ready in this particular situation to take this risk. And I ah this was my judgment. You may disagree with it: that if I were to go one step further to participate there in this you know apparently neutral—they can tell me "Yeah of course it's not politics it's just trends or trends or trends in postmodern cinema whatever"—that is too much. If I do this and only this, we may disagree. I think especially because
that Israeli historian—I always like this example—who first discovered how Israelis did a little bit of moderate by our post-Yugoslav high standards, but nonetheless ethnic cleansing, burning one or two Palestinian villages to make them escape, and how this was—okay they did it. And first he was the darling of the left: "Oh you see our found left always leftists always like to discover founding crimes," no? Especially since you can do this retroactively in a safe way you don't really lose everything, to just hypocritically regret it, no? But then he—everybody was surprised when his—his point was: "No, we had to do it and the solution would have been to do even more." His idea was that they they should have grabbed the opportunity of throwing all Arabs out and then we would have peace now in the Middle East. Now I claim simply that there is a truth in it. And I'm not saying Israel shouldn't get a state. I'm saying it's really an objective deadlock. Let's not make it easy and say "Oh with a little bit of more humanitarian politics it would be..." but to go back to your boycott question. There, how should I put it? In principle I... I mean it's always this strategic question of collaboration. Like for example, Agamben, United States. Was it a wise thing for him to do that act about which he is now bitter—not bitter that he did it wrong but bitter that it didn't work, cause a movement. You remember when two years ago when Agamben proclaimed that he will no longer enter United States because he refused this what they do to you now: this scanning of your eye all that stuff, fingerprints and so on, claiming this is totalitarian scientific and so on. But then I had a long talk with with Badiou. And Badiou's point was that he was opposed to it, not only because he likes to go to United States, but he told me but like isn't there a problem with it? Like do you know that French authorities for example are doing this for people coming from Africa and so on already for for decades, no? Like all it you know it has a little bit of this "My god when we intellectuals are touched by it all of a sudden..." Okay, my problem my only problem as I put it with that boycott—I am not—for me it's a concrete question. I have two problems. One problem is that nonetheless—and I am absolutely not in any way accepting this absolute victimization of the Jews and so on—but in Europe although I know there is a big distinction Israel, Jews and many of the proponents, even the main, of that boycott were themselves leftist Jews like Steven Rose and so on, no? But nonetheless I think it's too much playing with fire to you know the topic "Boycott the Jews" is a very sensitive topic in Europe. You play with fire too much. Second thing, I although he would probably support the boycott but I am here along the lines of one of the suggestions that Edward Said made. It's the same as with you... Why why boycott? Why not... okay, when I say why not go there and tell the truth? Some of proponents of the boycott would have said, "But you are in this way manipulated. Whatever you say it doesn't matter, what matters more is that by your presence there you give legitimacy." No, I think it's a matter to judge. I'm not so sure about it, frankly. I think it's a matter to judge: yes or no. I'm not so sure. For example, to give you a concrete example which concerns me, maybe you even know it and that's why you ask me a question. I was invited to now and I'm going probably, it's not even sure, maybe now there to the Tel Aviv whatever or Jerusalem I don't know film festival. And I saw where the manipulation is. The manipulation is that after I said conditionally yes, they all of a sudden wanted me to participate at some round tables and so on and so on. I think that if I do what I do is relatively the right thing. I set an absolute condition that the only place where I will appear is the screening of Udi Aloni's film "Forgiveness," which is—I think I even mentioned it—a film whole point of which is that that above on the very ground where Israelis in '49 burned one of the Palestinian villages, they built the irony psychiatric hospital for treatment of shock treatment of those who survived Holocaust. And the thesis of the film is a very nice thesis is that then it's kind of a progressive Stephen King: that the ghosts of the dead Palestinians come and there is this kind of a—it's very nice idea. I mean another my cynical point is that the film in its quality doesn't exactly live to this but the idea is then this kind of a strange solidarity of Holocaust survivors with the Palestinians there. Like they recognize themselves in this underground. Sorry, to make a statement like this today in Israel, I was ready in this particular situation to take this risk. And I ah this was my judgment. You may disagree with it: that if I were to go one step further to participate there in this you know apparently neutral—they can tell me "Yeah of course it's not politics it's just trends or trends or trends in postmodern cinema whatever"—that is too much. If I do this and only this, we may disagree. I think especially because
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Udi
Udi
Slavoj Žižek
Aloni is of course now also trying to organize for me and I'm also aware of the hypocrisy of this: namely to do the usual
Aloni is of course now also trying to organize for me and I'm also aware of the hypocrisy of this: namely to do the usual
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thing,
thing,
Slavoj Žižek
to jump over to Ramallah, Hebron I don't know. Now I'm well aware that this is also part of the intellectual
to jump over to Ramallah, Hebron I don't know. Now I'm well aware that this is also part of the intellectual
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tourism,
tourism,
Slavoj Žižek
that many so-called
that many so-called
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progressives
progressives
Slavoj Žižek
think: "Okay you can have a nice time in Israel, then you
think: "Okay you can have a nice time in Israel, then you
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jump
jump
Slavoj Žižek
over your conscience is clear." But
over your conscience is clear." But
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again, you may
again, you may
Slavoj Žižek
disagree, but in this specific situation ah I if you ask me the idea of Edward Said that I like is instead of playing with all this terror or only with so-called terror like why not
disagree, but in this specific situation ah I if you ask me the idea of Edward Said that I like is instead of playing with all this terror or only with so-called terror like why not
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organize
organize
Slavoj Žižek
something totally crazy like a march for peace? Getting thousands of people all these progressives for peace from Western Europe from there and unite them with Palestinians and organize—okay now maybe the moment is *passé*—a big march for unified Jerusalem. It's a very naive idea. What if it would work? At least in embarrassing the Israeli government. You know just to have thousand how would they prevent it? Would they they would have to do crazy things which would in itself make the event successful. They would have to stop people coming. You just get Americans all from Western Europe big march for unity of Jerusalem. I mean I that I would so my idea was be what if that—let's not forget the opposite strategy overwhelming the Israel. Go there, talk, behave as if you can say anything you want there. Sorry, okay, counter-attack. But people are doing it every day. People are trying to march to the museum where the wall is being built, people are holding peace marches, and people... I know, yeah yeah. people are marching and so on, but I was thinking of organizing a mega-event... million march... Oh no no no no. This would have been something. I don't think—it's again a question of judgment—if okay let's not exaggerate, maybe not million, but if people were to do this, I don't think it would be just, "Okay it happened, it's *passé*." I think that something crazy almost to the effect of the falling of the Berlin of the Berlin Wall would have would have happened. Okay. A couple of questions please. But now I'm getting tired. A couple means two, yeah yeah yeah. Now I'm the partisan of Western logocentric notion of billiard time. You've said that you don't have a program. What is the role of an intellectual outside of the academia within the movements? I know that's quite a political question and I don't expect anything, I just want to know your opinion. What caused the concept of nomadism to cause so much distress? Is it purely academic or is it actually something else? Ah, yeah! Is it purely academia or actually something else? So nomadism then role of the intellectual. But let us start with nomadism and finish up with the role of the intellectual because that would be also a nice way to summarize what we have done in the last... Yeah yeah yeah. No, nomadism is simply: no the problem I have with nomadism is first it's first that I think it's as I already maybe even improvised here, one of the big ideological notions today. Ideological notion is for me a notion which instead of introducing distinctions covers up the crucial distinction. The problem with the notion of nomadism for me is that it covers on the one-one extreme: people who are objectively like me upper middle-class whatever intellectuals freely traveling, sometimes even business class if I get enough miles, around the world for whom with people who are you know like you have a civil war in a country, out of starvation you run. Now isn't something a little bit obscene covering you know it is as if—and I can vouch you I'm not bluffing here, this is my experience in the United States—you can see these American academics: "Oh you change place your location every three four years," and then you say "Oh you feel solidarity with all those poor refugees" whatever. There's it's a too suspicious a notion. That's my first problem. My second problem is insofar as we accept that nomadism is... where is the critical potential of this notion? This is my more fundamental approach. Late capitalism is nomadic. This is my true trauma. The problem I have is the same as the problem with those who criticize this self-identitarian authoritarian subject, patriarchal authority. But wait a minute, this is not the dominant subjectivity of our late capitalism. Our dominant subjectivity is nomadic: even sexually recreate yourself, don't be fixed, life—you know my god, even the great nomadist is here even Anthony Giddens where he defended this that you no longer can count of a long security and safe job, no? His answer is "But isn't this nostalgia for the old time? Isn't it wonderful like oh you have to reinvent yourself this career that career" and so on and so on. So again, I don't have any problem: if anything I am nomadic and crazily nomadic, like I live now in so many different places I'm almost a caricature of a nomadic guy. I fly at least once a month between Europe and Argentina, not to mention North America is for me a local flight. I'm... but it's not about traveling around but about the theoretical... here you made a nice point, I agree, because Deleuze practically didn't travel. Right. Yes. I was talking about the intellectual move, it's about the Nietzschean idea that suddenly you are not at home on that... Okay, yes yes, I agree. If you mean by nomadism this, then I agree with it. This kind of radical nomadism was precisely what I tried to develop when I mentioned about this threat of technology and how we have to cut off this very beloved reference of phenomenologists: embeddedness in life-world. Here I totally agree with you and I even think the beauty would have been that in this sense the truly cosmopolitan nomadic philosophers as a rule didn't travel. Two names come to my mind: Deleuze and before Kant. The greatest cosmopolitan, my god, never left practically Königsberg, no? So if you mean this, yes. Again, my allergy is my main allergy is only how easily this notion was incorporated by today's predominant ideology and so on and so on, no? But if you understand nomadism in this more radical sense I have I have no problems with it. Again, I try to be here kind of a Leninist. But then there was the other question which was role of intellectuals today. No, okay let's not lose time, let's just give a general reflection. You know, maybe in again it's a very pragmatic question: where are we today? Where are you as a person? If you want one... [laughs] now I will give you a shitty answer to this. Who am I? I will now spoke like that Zapatista leader: I am nothing, it's only all you that speak through me, you know that shit and so on. Okay but more seriously, yeah Marcus? You know it was fashionable to be against academic institutions and so on and so on. But the way I read it with the recent trends in academia, this Bologna Project of Europe and so on, where the rule is you know this connection with businesses, usefulness and so on and so on, I think that maybe the time has come when we should return precisely start to defend abstract with no direct social use academic studies. Maybe we should rehabilitate precisely the pure academia because again it's exposed all—I mean to make fun of academia it's no longer even a progressive thing, I think it's strictly part of the of the ruling of the ruling ideology. So I think that first institutionally in these struggles, I claim that academia is what we should fight for. With all the awareness that it's a false notion of freedom, but it's a false notion of freedom within which nonetheless it effects occur, real effects, breakthroughs and so on and so on. When you say public role of intellectuals, you know this old Marxist motto that which is a cause of optimism in tragedy that we should never forget that every fascism is a sign of a failed revolution, no? So you know when people say "Oh today the role of
something totally crazy like a march for peace? Getting thousands of people all these progressives for peace from Western Europe from there and unite them with Palestinians and organize—okay now maybe the moment is *passé*—a big march for unified Jerusalem. It's a very naive idea. What if it would work? At least in embarrassing the Israeli government. You know just to have thousand how would they prevent it? Would they they would have to do crazy things which would in itself make the event successful. They would have to stop people coming. You just get Americans all from Western Europe big march for unity of Jerusalem. I mean I that I would so my idea was be what if that—let's not forget the opposite strategy overwhelming the Israel. Go there, talk, behave as if you can say anything you want there. Sorry, okay, counter-attack. But people are doing it every day. People are trying to march to the museum where the wall is being built, people are holding peace marches, and people... I know, yeah yeah. people are marching and so on, but I was thinking of organizing a mega-event... million march... Oh no no no no. This would have been something. I don't think—it's again a question of judgment—if okay let's not exaggerate, maybe not million, but if people were to do this, I don't think it would be just, "Okay it happened, it's *passé*." I think that something crazy almost to the effect of the falling of the Berlin of the Berlin Wall would have would have happened. Okay. A couple of questions please. But now I'm getting tired. A couple means two, yeah yeah yeah. Now I'm the partisan of Western logocentric notion of billiard time. You've said that you don't have a program. What is the role of an intellectual outside of the academia within the movements? I know that's quite a political question and I don't expect anything, I just want to know your opinion. What caused the concept of nomadism to cause so much distress? Is it purely academic or is it actually something else? Ah, yeah! Is it purely academia or actually something else? So nomadism then role of the intellectual. But let us start with nomadism and finish up with the role of the intellectual because that would be also a nice way to summarize what we have done in the last... Yeah yeah yeah. No, nomadism is simply: no the problem I have with nomadism is first it's first that I think it's as I already maybe even improvised here, one of the big ideological notions today. Ideological notion is for me a notion which instead of introducing distinctions covers up the crucial distinction. The problem with the notion of nomadism for me is that it covers on the one-one extreme: people who are objectively like me upper middle-class whatever intellectuals freely traveling, sometimes even business class if I get enough miles, around the world for whom with people who are you know like you have a civil war in a country, out of starvation you run. Now isn't something a little bit obscene covering you know it is as if—and I can vouch you I'm not bluffing here, this is my experience in the United States—you can see these American academics: "Oh you change place your location every three four years," and then you say "Oh you feel solidarity with all those poor refugees" whatever. There's it's a too suspicious a notion. That's my first problem. My second problem is insofar as we accept that nomadism is... where is the critical potential of this notion? This is my more fundamental approach. Late capitalism is nomadic. This is my true trauma. The problem I have is the same as the problem with those who criticize this self-identitarian authoritarian subject, patriarchal authority. But wait a minute, this is not the dominant subjectivity of our late capitalism. Our dominant subjectivity is nomadic: even sexually recreate yourself, don't be fixed, life—you know my god, even the great nomadist is here even Anthony Giddens where he defended this that you no longer can count of a long security and safe job, no? His answer is "But isn't this nostalgia for the old time? Isn't it wonderful like oh you have to reinvent yourself this career that career" and so on and so on. So again, I don't have any problem: if anything I am nomadic and crazily nomadic, like I live now in so many different places I'm almost a caricature of a nomadic guy. I fly at least once a month between Europe and Argentina, not to mention North America is for me a local flight. I'm... but it's not about traveling around but about the theoretical... here you made a nice point, I agree, because Deleuze practically didn't travel. Right. Yes. I was talking about the intellectual move, it's about the Nietzschean idea that suddenly you are not at home on that... Okay, yes yes, I agree. If you mean by nomadism this, then I agree with it. This kind of radical nomadism was precisely what I tried to develop when I mentioned about this threat of technology and how we have to cut off this very beloved reference of phenomenologists: embeddedness in life-world. Here I totally agree with you and I even think the beauty would have been that in this sense the truly cosmopolitan nomadic philosophers as a rule didn't travel. Two names come to my mind: Deleuze and before Kant. The greatest cosmopolitan, my god, never left practically Königsberg, no? So if you mean this, yes. Again, my allergy is my main allergy is only how easily this notion was incorporated by today's predominant ideology and so on and so on, no? But if you understand nomadism in this more radical sense I have I have no problems with it. Again, I try to be here kind of a Leninist. But then there was the other question which was role of intellectuals today. No, okay let's not lose time, let's just give a general reflection. You know, maybe in again it's a very pragmatic question: where are we today? Where are you as a person? If you want one... [laughs] now I will give you a shitty answer to this. Who am I? I will now spoke like that Zapatista leader: I am nothing, it's only all you that speak through me, you know that shit and so on. Okay but more seriously, yeah Marcus? You know it was fashionable to be against academic institutions and so on and so on. But the way I read it with the recent trends in academia, this Bologna Project of Europe and so on, where the rule is you know this connection with businesses, usefulness and so on and so on, I think that maybe the time has come when we should return precisely start to defend abstract with no direct social use academic studies. Maybe we should rehabilitate precisely the pure academia because again it's exposed all—I mean to make fun of academia it's no longer even a progressive thing, I think it's strictly part of the of the ruling of the ruling ideology. So I think that first institutionally in these struggles, I claim that academia is what we should fight for. With all the awareness that it's a false notion of freedom, but it's a false notion of freedom within which nonetheless it effects occur, real effects, breakthroughs and so on and so on. When you say public role of intellectuals, you know this old Marxist motto that which is a cause of optimism in tragedy that we should never forget that every fascism is a sign of a failed revolution, no? So you know when people say "Oh today the role of
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intellectual..."
intellectual..."
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but wait a minute. As if there were times when intellectuals really had a greater role. Do you think that in the Germany of the 50s everybody was listening to Adorno? No! Or even today, I mentioned this example. Do you not don't you live—don't we live in a unique
but wait a minute. As if there were times when intellectuals really had a greater role. Do you think that in the Germany of the 50s everybody was listening to Adorno? No! Or even today, I mentioned this example. Do you not don't you live—don't we live in a unique
Slavoj Žižek
situation
situation
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where all
where all
Slavoj Žižek
of us to make decisions we are forced to make, like on
of us to make decisions we are forced to make, like on
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abortion, on this, on that? You have to take a qualified position on issues which were usually
abortion, on this, on that? You have to take a qualified position on issues which were usually
Slavoj Žižek
considered as even I would say philosophical issues. Like to take a qualified position on should we allow this: stem cells, bio-genetic manipulations, abortion and so on. My god, you have to implicitly at least to take a position on the whole series of topics, philosophical topics like what is human dignity, what is human freedom and so on and so on. So in this sense I claim that we live in almost in an era where we are forced in if you can no longer take leave of these kind of questions to just to specialist philosophers. We are all of us forced to be philosophers. There is something in what is going on in these quick changes changing the very foundations of our life-world challenge and so on, which forces all of us of in some way becoming philosophers. And for me the bad things which are going on, the bad things being like this spread of New Age wisdom and so on and so on, it's Buddhism, orthodoxy, Greek guy speaks in tongues and so on. It is precisely I think a sign of that the field the field is open. And I'm here I think that it can that it can be done. But by it can be done I mean that there is now an—I'm not such a pessimist. Because when people—you know when people say, "Oh today the role of intellectual..." but wait a minute, as if there were times when intellectuals really had a greater role. Do you think that in the Germany of the 50s everybody was listening to Adorno? No! It's our nostalgic myth. If anything, I think that today intellectuals—no, we don't have a direct
considered as even I would say philosophical issues. Like to take a qualified position on should we allow this: stem cells, bio-genetic manipulations, abortion and so on. My god, you have to implicitly at least to take a position on the whole series of topics, philosophical topics like what is human dignity, what is human freedom and so on and so on. So in this sense I claim that we live in almost in an era where we are forced in if you can no longer take leave of these kind of questions to just to specialist philosophers. We are all of us forced to be philosophers. There is something in what is going on in these quick changes changing the very foundations of our life-world challenge and so on, which forces all of us of in some way becoming philosophers. And for me the bad things which are going on, the bad things being like this spread of New Age wisdom and so on and so on, it's Buddhism, orthodoxy, Greek guy speaks in tongues and so on. It is precisely I think a sign of that the field the field is open. And I'm here I think that it can that it can be done. But by it can be done I mean that there is now an—I'm not such a pessimist. Because when people—you know when people say, "Oh today the role of intellectual..." but wait a minute, as if there were times when intellectuals really had a greater role. Do you think that in the Germany of the 50s everybody was listening to Adorno? No! It's our nostalgic myth. If anything, I think that today intellectuals—no, we don't have a direct
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influence
influence
Slavoj Žižek
on power—but we are influential in a much more radical way, in the way how we provide the very terms how people even those in power perceive their own problems. I mean look at this guy: who is now influencing Bush and all that stuff? It's these neocons. Neocons are intellectuals, like some of them even our friends, like Frank Fukuyama. So intellectuals are—it's they are here, they are doing things. So I don't feel I don't feel this need to reg—to regret the loss of the role of intellectuals. I think that we are precisely in the middle of it. The problem is just how can we do it
on power—but we are influential in a much more radical way, in the way how we provide the very terms how people even those in power perceive their own problems. I mean look at this guy: who is now influencing Bush and all that stuff? It's these neocons. Neocons are intellectuals, like some of them even our friends, like Frank Fukuyama. So intellectuals are—it's they are here, they are doing things. So I don't feel I don't feel this need to reg—to regret the loss of the role of intellectuals. I think that we are precisely in the middle of it. The problem is just how can we do it
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better? No, I'm optimistic
better? No, I'm optimistic
Slavoj Žižek
in the same way like I always refer to to the end of Kafka's "The Trial" or "The Castle" no, when when people say "Oh Kafka so pessimistic," but did you notice the final dialogue? When they ask him "So what do you think? Is there hope?" And Kafka says "Of course, absolute hope, an ocean of hope." "But then what's the problem?" and Kafka says "Only not for us." [laughter] So in this sense in this sense I'm I'm totally okay, the last thing: I'm totally optimist. You know when you ask people do you have any hope and people say "no," this doesn't mean that there is really no hope. It just means that the standard notions of hope—standard leftist hope: social democracy, blah blah—are dead. But people don't know it yet. It's when you lose this hope, that's for me the first step to true hope. So in this sense we should lose hope. Okay, thank you. [applause]
in the same way like I always refer to to the end of Kafka's "The Trial" or "The Castle" no, when when people say "Oh Kafka so pessimistic," but did you notice the final dialogue? When they ask him "So what do you think? Is there hope?" And Kafka says "Of course, absolute hope, an ocean of hope." "But then what's the problem?" and Kafka says "Only not for us." [laughter] So in this sense in this sense I'm I'm totally okay, the last thing: I'm totally optimist. You know when you ask people do you have any hope and people say "no," this doesn't mean that there is really no hope. It just means that the standard notions of hope—standard leftist hope: social democracy, blah blah—are dead. But people don't know it yet. It's when you lose this hope, that's for me the first step to true hope. So in this sense we should lose hope. Okay, thank you. [applause]