Slavoj Zizek. The Future of Europe. 2009 8/12
Talk · European Graduate School Video Lectures ·
2009-03-07 · 0:13:19 · 1,831 words
capitalismideologypoliticsecology-climaterevolution-violencegeopolitics-warphilosophy-general
Žižek critiques the illusion of choice in late capitalism, arguing that we are forced to make decisions without knowing their coordinates, illustrated by the ecological paradox of 'dying forests' and the political rise of populist technocrats in Italy and Poland. He analyzes the normalization of the state of exception (deploying the army in Italy) and the irrational violence of suburban protests as symptoms of a new apartheid between included and excluded populations. Concluding with a rejection of 'deep ecology' and nostalgic Marxism, he argues that we must embrace alienation, knowledge, and emergency brakes rather than trusting in an invisible hand of history or market.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 14
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
The contemporary condition, described by Beck and Giddens, where life is defined by endless superficial choices that mask the absence of real alternatives.
Excessive, trivial options (like pillow types or soda brands) that serve as a mask for the lack of substantive political or economic agency.
The tragic modern condition where individuals are forced to make decisions without knowing the consequences or the framework in which those decisions operate.
John Gray's diagnosis of modernity: we are compelled to exercise freedom even when we lack the knowledge or coordinates to do so meaningfully.
The paradox that necessary progressive structural changes (like Nixon's China pact or de Gaulle's Algeria independence) can only be enacted by right-wing figures to avoid political backlash.
The emerging political division in Europe, replacing left/right, between enlightened, multicultural elites and right-wing populist movements.
The future social structure characterized by a growing population living in slums, de facto excluded from the benefits of liberal capitalism.
as “permanent state of emergency”
The legal and political mechanism (exemplified by Berlusconi's Italy) allowing the deployment of the army in cities under the guise of fighting crime or immigration, normalizing the state of exception.
The only remaining form of protest in the new political space, characterized by a lack of program and a communicative act of 'being noted' (e.g., burning cars and mosques in Paris suburbs).
The current historical juncture where new forms of apartheid and ecological crisis converge, marking the end of the old liberal capitalist order without guaranteeing a better successor.
as “train of history running without a driver”
The rejection of Marxist historical necessity; history is not progressing toward liberation but is careening toward catastrophe, requiring us to pull the emergency brakes.
The realization that there is no inherent harmony with destiny or the market; we must actively struggle and use knowledge rather than trusting in invisible hands.
as “we need more alienation”
The counter-intuitive claim that we must reject 'deep ecology's' call for intimate connection with nature and instead embrace technological alienation and knowledge to manage the chaos.
as “nature is one big ecological catastrophe”
The materialist view that nature is not a harmonious mother but an abyss of chaos (e.g., oil reserves produced by catastrophe), and we must accept this open, risky situation.
Stories he reaches for 3
The 20-30 year old German environmental panic about forests dying, which turned out to be false as forests are now more abundant, illustrating the paradox of making choices without knowing their effects (e.g., CO2 drying forests).
“some 20, 30 years ago... the big topic was waldsterben, the dying of forests.”
Youth in Paris suburbs burned cars and local mosques without a political program, acting as a communicative gesture ('I'm here, I want to be noted') rather than a political demand.
“the cars that were burning in paris suburbs... they burned were the local mosques... they didn't have any program.”
The Italian government declared a permanent state of emergency to legally deploy the army in cities against the mafia and immigrants, normalizing the state of exception and the use of military force in democratic settings.
“half a year ago, the berlusconi government proclaimed a permanent state of emergency in all of italy?”
People invoked 10
Referenced only in a self-deprecating joke about his nickname 'Fidel' due to talking too much.
Marxists (Old) negative
Žižek finds them 'nostalgic' and 'admirable' for believing in the 'train of history,' but rejects their trust in historical necessity as dangerous.
Richard Nixon positive
Used as an example of a right-wing figure who could make a progressive leftist move (pact with China) without political backlash.
Silvio Berlusconi positive
Described as bringing together 'neutral technocrat' and 'populist card'; cited as an example of the new political formation and the normalization of emergency states in Italy.
Charles de Gaulle positive
Used as an example of a right-wing figure who could enact a necessary leftist thing (independence for Algeria) because he was not seen as a communist.
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens positive
Cited alongside Beck for the concept of the 'society of choice'.
John N. Gray positive
Described as a 'British well-known pessimist' whose diagnosis 'we are forced to live as if we were free' Žižek agrees with.
Barack Obama positive
Žižek expects little from him personally but argues he will be a 'great conservative president' because only a leftist-credentialed figure can enact brutal restructuring without being attacked as soft.
Ulrich Beck positive
Cited as someone who taught us that we live in a 'society of choice'.
Vladimir Putin positive
Cited as offering 'European democracy with Asian values,' representing the synthesis of Europe and Asia in a new gated authoritarian community.
Transcript 8 turns
·
what mean?
what mean?
Slavoj Žižek
by. if. let's take the problem of choice. of course, as all those guys, ulrich beck, anthony giddens taught us, we live in a society of choice, blah, blah. okay, the standard marxist criticism would have been, and there is an element of truth in it, all these choices are superficial, fake choices which mask the absence of a true choice. and it's true. recently i was in chicago in one of the highly developed hotels and it was a nightmare just to check in. you know, you have to go to some 20, 0, you know, do you want back windows? front window do you want soft pillow heart? we want like all this excessive freedom which masks the fact that you know, it's like my best metaphor for me of our freedom today is like there are these stupid choices like, you know, oh, big freedom, coca-cola, pepsi cola, you know, and so on. two of the same. but the problem is not just this, but it's the real choice. the problem, i think, is that we are often in a much more tragic situation. we are! has put it. force! to make choices! without really having even the coordinates of what? the choices are about. for example, let's take ecology. and total. proecconomics. but i think that... the
by. if. let's take the problem of choice. of course, as all those guys, ulrich beck, anthony giddens taught us, we live in a society of choice, blah, blah. okay, the standard marxist criticism would have been, and there is an element of truth in it, all these choices are superficial, fake choices which mask the absence of a true choice. and it's true. recently i was in chicago in one of the highly developed hotels and it was a nightmare just to check in. you know, you have to go to some 20, 0, you know, do you want back windows? front window do you want soft pillow heart? we want like all this excessive freedom which masks the fact that you know, it's like my best metaphor for me of our freedom today is like there are these stupid choices like, you know, oh, big freedom, coca-cola, pepsi cola, you know, and so on. two of the same. but the problem is not just this, but it's the real choice. the problem, i think, is that we are often in a much more tragic situation. we are! has put it. force! to make choices! without really having even the coordinates of what? the choices are about. for example, let's take ecology. and total. proecconomics. but i think that... the
·
diligently.
diligently.
Slavoj Žižek
honest. green people. we recognize to you that even they don't really know what are the effects, what will be going on. for example, if you are from germany or close to, you remember how when i was younger, some 20, 30 years ago, the big topic was waldsterben, the dying of forests. now we know that there are now more forests than at any point around the world in the last 100 years. that the paradox of this global warming and carbon dioxide and so on is that forests dry more. like know, the problem is that we are compelled of making choices. without having because we know many things. but we know too many conflicting things and so on and so on. the french the sorry, british well-known pessimist. john gray put it. we are forced to live as if we were free. we. even having the coordinate. the... by political! uh diagnosis is the following one. for me, the there are two countries of future in europe, italy and poland. poland why? because it i'm referring to the last electorate. because because they are where we are all heading, i claim. the way it looks now, the future is either you no longer have left and right, you have one neutral.
honest. green people. we recognize to you that even they don't really know what are the effects, what will be going on. for example, if you are from germany or close to, you remember how when i was younger, some 20, 30 years ago, the big topic was waldsterben, the dying of forests. now we know that there are now more forests than at any point around the world in the last 100 years. that the paradox of this global warming and carbon dioxide and so on is that forests dry more. like know, the problem is that we are compelled of making choices. without having because we know many things. but we know too many conflicting things and so on and so on. the french the sorry, british well-known pessimist. john gray put it. we are forced to live as if we were free. we. even having the coordinate. the... by political! uh diagnosis is the following one. for me, the there are two countries of future in europe, italy and poland. poland why? because it i'm referring to the last electorate. because because they are where we are all heading, i claim. the way it looks now, the future is either you no longer have left and right, you have one neutral.
·
theocratic party
theocratic party
Slavoj Žižek
and then a right-wing populist part. and that's, i think, what is gradually emerging. the new division is... pure universalist technocrats, usually multicultural, blah blah blah, enlightened capitalists and and the true danger of all this crisis of this why coincidentally, although i don't expect too much from obama, i think obama will be, if he will succeed, the a great conservative president. in what sense? you know how... often in the history there are things which are progressive leftist, but only right winger can do that. it was only nixon who could have made pact with china. if a left president were to do it, he would be immediately attacked, oh, communist, soft on communism. only de gaulle was able to give independence to algeria, necessary leftist thing. i think that today with obama is exactly the opposite. there is this, as the noble word for brutal things, necessary restructuring to do it. and if bush were to do it, everybody would explode, brutal capitalists and so on. it's only someone with leftist leftist credentials who can do it. so,, in this completely blurred situation. again. i fear that the political scene today, a very sad one. either, that's for me the lesson of the last polish elections, the lesson of italian, not so much elections, ah berlusconi is here. an interesting phenomenon because he brings the two together. he is neutral technocrat, but at the same time playing the populist card. which is bike. it's almost getting more and more difficult to oppose him, but i was thinking about other things in italy. something strange is going on which if you ask me frankly is a premonition of where we are heading. now i'm talking about the last antagonism which is exploding, the antagonism between excluded and included. we are more and more, i claim, approaching a kind of a universal gated community, where there simply is a larger and larger part of our populations who live in slums, are de facto excluded and so on and so on. so in... in italy? you know, the only way to fight it, and we should learn to fight it, otherwise, is of course a kind of a permanent emergency state. and are you even aware that this is what they did in italy? it was a small note, but it shattered me. in the newspapers that, do you know that half a year ago, the berlusconi government proclaimed a permanent state of emergency in all of italy? and what does this mean? first day deployed it was even popular by the people. the catch is that in this way they can legally, because you can do this in democratic countries only in an emergency state. you can deploy army in... your own state in the cities and so on. first they did it in napoli against the mafia now then against the immigrant threat now they are starting serious it's not a joke to use army units to fight rapes and prostitution and so on and so on. now you will tell me but wait a minute i was last week in rome it's not so horrible i think our future. kind of a... state of exception. and normal state.
and then a right-wing populist part. and that's, i think, what is gradually emerging. the new division is... pure universalist technocrats, usually multicultural, blah blah blah, enlightened capitalists and and the true danger of all this crisis of this why coincidentally, although i don't expect too much from obama, i think obama will be, if he will succeed, the a great conservative president. in what sense? you know how... often in the history there are things which are progressive leftist, but only right winger can do that. it was only nixon who could have made pact with china. if a left president were to do it, he would be immediately attacked, oh, communist, soft on communism. only de gaulle was able to give independence to algeria, necessary leftist thing. i think that today with obama is exactly the opposite. there is this, as the noble word for brutal things, necessary restructuring to do it. and if bush were to do it, everybody would explode, brutal capitalists and so on. it's only someone with leftist leftist credentials who can do it. so,, in this completely blurred situation. again. i fear that the political scene today, a very sad one. either, that's for me the lesson of the last polish elections, the lesson of italian, not so much elections, ah berlusconi is here. an interesting phenomenon because he brings the two together. he is neutral technocrat, but at the same time playing the populist card. which is bike. it's almost getting more and more difficult to oppose him, but i was thinking about other things in italy. something strange is going on which if you ask me frankly is a premonition of where we are heading. now i'm talking about the last antagonism which is exploding, the antagonism between excluded and included. we are more and more, i claim, approaching a kind of a universal gated community, where there simply is a larger and larger part of our populations who live in slums, are de facto excluded and so on and so on. so in... in italy? you know, the only way to fight it, and we should learn to fight it, otherwise, is of course a kind of a permanent emergency state. and are you even aware that this is what they did in italy? it was a small note, but it shattered me. in the newspapers that, do you know that half a year ago, the berlusconi government proclaimed a permanent state of emergency in all of italy? and what does this mean? first day deployed it was even popular by the people. the catch is that in this way they can legally, because you can do this in democratic countries only in an emergency state. you can deploy army in... your own state in the cities and so on. first they did it in napoli against the mafia now then against the immigrant threat now they are starting serious it's not a joke to use army units to fight rapes and prostitution and so on and so on. now you will tell me but wait a minute i was last week in rome it's not so horrible i think our future. kind of a... state of exception. and normal state.
·
somehow state of
somehow state of
Slavoj Žižek
the will get gradually normalize. and the same thing is then that... in this new political space. the only protest. remaining is a totally irrational violent protest. i think that another indicator here are, you remember the cars that were burning in paris suburbs two years ago in a little it now. these protests, i think, are and exemplary of today's politics. they are very mysterious, you know. they were not, as some right-wingers forthought, islamist protests. of this of suburban youth. no, the first thing they burned were the local mosques and their cultural center islam. the second shock, they didn't have any program. it's not we want this, we want that. it was just... what in linguistics. we communication. you know, like, hey, i'm here, i want to be noted. like just... to be noted. and so again. here i'm not saying it should be absolutely not the old left, but i think that somehow something that we once called socialism, communism, whatever, will have to be reinvented. absolutely not in the same way. don't be afraid. i'm not trying to sell you a new leninist party where who will do it. it's crazy, whatever. just that, to be very precise, we will have to discover a new mode of collective acting, everybody knows this in a way, even big powers when they meet in bali to debate and do nothing. a new form of even... across the states, transnational. social political activity. weak! oui. not be. market orient. but also not cheap. state control. because i think that... we are approaching on all these levels, ecology, intellectual property, chaos, all these new forms of apartheid, we are approaching a kind of a... apocalyptic final point. i'm not saying it will be catastrophe. i'm saying it's a final point where then i claim i have nothing against the ongoing relatively well-functioning western european liberal capitalism. what i'm saying is that it cannot last. i give it. the way it is, if you ask . new gated authoritarian community, we will have to have this will be the synthesis of europe and asia and this is what putin is offering us. a kind of european democracy with asian values, as they put it, no, or we will invent something. it's not so much. and there is a problem here. what problem? in contrast to old marxism, we don't have the train of history on our side. you know, that's what is so nostalgic, admirable about the old marxists who thought hysterical necessity is on our side. you know, just development is necessary and so on and so on. there is no train of history. and so when somebody tells you, oh, but i see the light at the end of the tunnel, we from ex-eastern europe, we know very well what's our first reaction. when somebody tells you it's not as bad, there is light at the end of the tunnel, it's probably, yes, another train is coming towards us, no. uh. claimed the meta for today shouldn't be we should ride the train of history towards progress but the train is running without a... driver, pilot, whatever to the end, we should put the emergency brakes. we should stop and so we don't have history on our side. we fight games. knowledge. knowledge, organization. more. error. you cannot have this either capitalist or communist trust either on invisible hand of market or on invisible hand of history or whatever. there is no, if anything, destiny is against us. we cannot say that we are in higher harmony with destiny. we have to be. and that's the true challenge. you cannot do it without knowledge against all those new aglers claim we know too much, we try to know too much, we need this kind of to rediscover ourselves, find a way back to intimate communication with earth and so on and so on. no, i say quite on the contrary. we need more. more alienation. i think precisely, let me just conclude with this. for example, take ecology. i explained the so-called deep mystical ecology. you know, we are too much involved with techniques, we need to find a deeper link vibrating with our life world. that's the formula of catastrophe. for me. because what we have to accept is precisely that there is no nature, nature in this mythical sense, you know, mother earth that we betrayed and so on. what is nature? nature is one big ecological catastrophe which produced oil reserves. we this is again what we have to accept. even there, there is no mother earth that we violated and we have to return to it. there is the abyss of chaos, nothing. the only thing is to accept this totally open situation and accept the risks and trust our knowledge. we need knowledge more than ever. i'm sorry if i was too long, but that's life. i talk too much. at least you know why my friends call me fidel, like fidel castro. comrade, just five minutes, and thank you.
the will get gradually normalize. and the same thing is then that... in this new political space. the only protest. remaining is a totally irrational violent protest. i think that another indicator here are, you remember the cars that were burning in paris suburbs two years ago in a little it now. these protests, i think, are and exemplary of today's politics. they are very mysterious, you know. they were not, as some right-wingers forthought, islamist protests. of this of suburban youth. no, the first thing they burned were the local mosques and their cultural center islam. the second shock, they didn't have any program. it's not we want this, we want that. it was just... what in linguistics. we communication. you know, like, hey, i'm here, i want to be noted. like just... to be noted. and so again. here i'm not saying it should be absolutely not the old left, but i think that somehow something that we once called socialism, communism, whatever, will have to be reinvented. absolutely not in the same way. don't be afraid. i'm not trying to sell you a new leninist party where who will do it. it's crazy, whatever. just that, to be very precise, we will have to discover a new mode of collective acting, everybody knows this in a way, even big powers when they meet in bali to debate and do nothing. a new form of even... across the states, transnational. social political activity. weak! oui. not be. market orient. but also not cheap. state control. because i think that... we are approaching on all these levels, ecology, intellectual property, chaos, all these new forms of apartheid, we are approaching a kind of a... apocalyptic final point. i'm not saying it will be catastrophe. i'm saying it's a final point where then i claim i have nothing against the ongoing relatively well-functioning western european liberal capitalism. what i'm saying is that it cannot last. i give it. the way it is, if you ask . new gated authoritarian community, we will have to have this will be the synthesis of europe and asia and this is what putin is offering us. a kind of european democracy with asian values, as they put it, no, or we will invent something. it's not so much. and there is a problem here. what problem? in contrast to old marxism, we don't have the train of history on our side. you know, that's what is so nostalgic, admirable about the old marxists who thought hysterical necessity is on our side. you know, just development is necessary and so on and so on. there is no train of history. and so when somebody tells you, oh, but i see the light at the end of the tunnel, we from ex-eastern europe, we know very well what's our first reaction. when somebody tells you it's not as bad, there is light at the end of the tunnel, it's probably, yes, another train is coming towards us, no. uh. claimed the meta for today shouldn't be we should ride the train of history towards progress but the train is running without a... driver, pilot, whatever to the end, we should put the emergency brakes. we should stop and so we don't have history on our side. we fight games. knowledge. knowledge, organization. more. error. you cannot have this either capitalist or communist trust either on invisible hand of market or on invisible hand of history or whatever. there is no, if anything, destiny is against us. we cannot say that we are in higher harmony with destiny. we have to be. and that's the true challenge. you cannot do it without knowledge against all those new aglers claim we know too much, we try to know too much, we need this kind of to rediscover ourselves, find a way back to intimate communication with earth and so on and so on. no, i say quite on the contrary. we need more. more alienation. i think precisely, let me just conclude with this. for example, take ecology. i explained the so-called deep mystical ecology. you know, we are too much involved with techniques, we need to find a deeper link vibrating with our life world. that's the formula of catastrophe. for me. because what we have to accept is precisely that there is no nature, nature in this mythical sense, you know, mother earth that we betrayed and so on. what is nature? nature is one big ecological catastrophe which produced oil reserves. we this is again what we have to accept. even there, there is no mother earth that we violated and we have to return to it. there is the abyss of chaos, nothing. the only thing is to accept this totally open situation and accept the risks and trust our knowledge. we need knowledge more than ever. i'm sorry if i was too long, but that's life. i talk too much. at least you know why my friends call me fidel, like fidel castro. comrade, just five minutes, and thank you.