Slavoj Žižek, "'Unbehagen in der Natur': On Thinking the End of Nature"
Lecture · Critical Theory ·
2022-11-02 · 2:25:59 · 18,068 words
with Norman Finkelstein
psychoanalysisecology-climateideologycapitalismsexuality-genderhegel-dialecticsfreedomtechnology-ai-cyberspacegeopolitics-warcommunism-socialismreligion-theologyscience-physicsphilosophy-generalrace-antisemitismcinema-art-culturesubjectivity
Žižek critiques contemporary debates on transgender identity and ecological ideology, arguing that both rely on a superficial notion of freedom that ignores the traumatic reality of subjectivity. He analyzes the 'ecological super-ego' as a mechanism of guilt that individualizes systemic crises, allowing capitalism to commodify responsibility. Finally, he deconstructs post-anthropocentric discourse, asserting that the attempt to position humans as merely one species among others is itself a deeply anthropocentric and hubristic stance. Žižek argues that true freedom lies in the paradox of predestination where one acts without knowing the outcome, using Hannah Arendt and Protestant theology to illustrate this. He contends that modern biogenetics and technology have ended 'nature' as a stable background, rendering it an artificial, fragile mechanism. He critiques 'false ideological ecologies' and the paralysis of contemporary capitalism, suggesting that we must accept the 'living dead' nature of ruins and the 'chindogu' aesthetic of useless functionality to resist capitalist dynamics. Žižek argues that ecological awareness must embrace the 'mixture' of nature and pollution, citing Timothy Morton and examples like the Manhattan rat crisis and the Great Leap Forward sparrow campaign. He critiques the liberal desire to 'ameliorate' global warming without abolishing the lifestyle causing it, using an Orwell quote and his own psychoanalytic experience as illustrations. He calls for a global, totalitarian-style response involving egalitarianism, terror, and voluntarism, drawing on Badiou and Benjamin, while analyzing the Catholic Church's role in domesticating technological horror and the geopolitical implications of the Ukraine war. Žižek argues that cultural and sexual selection operate through aesthetic excess and fantasy rather than pure efficiency or truth, using examples from Stone Age tools, peacocks, and pornography. He critiques both conservative and liberal/LGBT+ views on gender, positing that 'gender trouble' is constitutive to sexuality itself, not merely a social construct to be liberated. He contrasts his Hegelian-Lacanian view of mediation and recognition with liberal interpretations, emphasizing the necessity of fantasy and the 'gap' in sexual reality. Žižek argues that Hegel is not a figure of absolute closure but a pessimist who recognizes the incompletion of history, using the 'woman without cream' metaphor to discuss mediation. He critiques multiculturalism as a form of racist patronization, citing the Taliban-China deal and Native American perspectives. Finally, he discusses science fiction and film, proposing a 'Stalinist' reinterpretation of Star Wars and Game of Thrones, and advocating for rewriting classical tragedies like Tosca with happy endings to expose ideological structures.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 46
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
The enjoyment derived from the 'useless' excess or burden (like peacock feathers or gold jewelry) which signals strength or status.
as “Discontent shifts from culture to nature”
A twist on Freud's Unbehagen in der Kultur, arguing that modern anxiety stems from nature itself becoming a fragile, exploding mechanism rather than culture.
as “unconscious choice”
The most radical choices are experienced not as free options but as necessity or fate, revealing a freedom in the unconscious that exceeds conscious self-awareness.
The symbolic order (here, state registration) that can catastrophically disrupt subjective reality, as seen when official recognition of gender transition led to suicide.
as “paradox of the super-ego”
The more one obeys the super-ego's commandment, the more guilty one feels; when read as an injunction to enjoy, the inevitable failure to fully attain enjoyment generates guilt.
The predominant form of ideology in global capitalism, functioning as a new opium for the masses by immobilizing individuals through anxiety rather than addressing systemic causes.
as “commodity logic of social responsibility”
The process by which capitalism incorporates ethical concerns (like saving children or forests) into the price of a commodity, allowing consumers to feel good about their decadence.
as “Nature is a social category”
A concept from Georg Lukács indicating that what we perceive as 'nature' is always overdetermined by social context and our relationship to it.
as “cynical stage of the functioning of ideology”
A stage where criticizing the ruling ideology actually makes the system function better, as the critique is incorporated into the system's self-reproduction.
as “post-anthropocentric vision”
The ideological attempt to place humans as one species among others in a horizontal relationship with nature, which Žižek argues is inherently anthropocentric.
The paradox where modern science aims to master nature (acting as universal beings) while simultaneously viewing humanity as just another species on Earth.
as “users' illusion”
The neurobiological term for the feeling of free will, which Žižek argues is the necessary condition for acting as if one is free despite being predetermined.
as “Protestant predestination paradox”
The idea that true freedom is not the ability to choose between options, but the anxiety of not knowing one's predetermined fate, forcing one to act responsibly.
as “Nature is unnatural”
The claim that nature is no longer a stable, organic background but a chaotic, manipulable, and artificial mechanism due to biogenetics and technology.
Five modes of ecological thinking (ignorance, techno-solutionism, market solution, super-ego pressure, return to natural balance) that fail to address the reality of 'unnatural' nature.
as “Social identity constructed by forced choice”
The mechanism where we are 'free' only on the condition that we make the 'right' choice, a structure exemplified by the Yugoslav army oath story.
The paradox that global capitalism demands constant engagement and hyperactivity, which results in political passivity and the inability to act on crises.
Japanese objects that function but are commercially useless, representing a way to undermine capitalist dynamics from within by creating meaningless utility.
as “Dead objects reclaimed by nature”
Walter Benjamin's concept of 'natural history' applied to ecology: accepting that nature is now the ruins of civilization being recaptured by decay, not pristine wilderness.
A Soviet-era utopian expression suggesting we should treat natural objects with the same political equality as human comrades, rejecting neo-spiritualist communication with trees.
Timothy Morton's term for entities too large or small to be directly perceived, which Žižek uses to frame the complex ecological reality we must accept.
Morton's concept for the irreducible strangeness of all entities (rocks, trees, plastic) that constitutes reality, which Žižek adopts to describe the non-pristine nature of the world.
Žižek's humorous application of a historical political term to rats during the pandemic, illustrating the 'leftist rat dream' of ending individualism through collective suffering.
Žižek's coinage for the current Russian official goal, replacing 'denazification' with a religiously charged term to describe Ukraine as a satanic cult, linking Putin, Dugin, and Western populism.
Not just reified society, but literally new, monstrous forms of life generated by technology that exceed ordinary nature, creating a horror that religion attempts to domesticate.
The life promised by the Church's defense of culture, which is a defense against death and fear, rather than an affirmative life.
Alain Badiou's concept, which Žižek adopts, consisting of four components: strict egalitarianism, terror, voluntarism, and trust in the people.
The necessity of acting without reliance on historical necessity or the 'big Other,' stopping the train of history to avoid collective suicide, as per Walter Benjamin.
Žižek's proposed alternative to the market, involving collective decisions on production and coordination, which he argues is necessary to avoid ecological catastrophe.
A process Žižek argues should not be mystified as authentic or rational, but understood as contingent, where environmental shifts determine survival rather than inherent 'best' qualities.
A process distinct from natural selection, driven by aesthetic logic and survival signals (like useless ornamentation) rather than pure efficiency.
The idea that language originated not to convey truth or refer to objects, but as a tool for deception and social manipulation.
A deadlock or trouble inscribed in the constitutive structure of human sexuality itself, not just a social binary to be dismantled.
The necessary fictional or symbolic framework that allows us to engage with the 'brutal reality' of sexual acts, which would otherwise appear as pure stupidity.
The psychoanalytic mechanism where repression of desire transforms into the enjoyment of the repression itself (obsessional neurosis).
Hegelian negation that overdetermines identity; the specific content of what is negated (e.g., cream vs. milk) changes the meaning, even if the material result is identical.
as “Anerkennung (mutual recognition)”
A liberal Hegelian ideal of society; Žižek critiques this by pointing to Hegel's example of the death penalty as true recognition of the criminal's rationality.
A metaphor for a woman in society deprived of creativity, illustrating how immediacy is retroactively mediated.
Reinterpreting Hegel not as a system of absolute knowledge, but as a thinker who accepts the madness of the world and the incompletion of history.
as “philosophy comes too late”
Hegel's claim that philosophy only describes the existing spiritual order when it is already in decay, preventing prediction of the future.
The process by which immediate realities are structured by symbolic/fantasy frameworks; Žižek argues Hegel's key insight is that mediation must finish in a new form of immediacy.
as “multiculturalism as oppression”
The idea that multiculturalism can function as 'I leave you your oppression, you leave me alone in my oppression,' a form of racist patronization.
The concept that our social reality is sustained by a collective dream, where disturbances in the dreamer's psyche manifest as physical gaps or holes in reality.
A thought experiment to reverse the moral valence of Star Wars, casting Palpatine and Vader as emancipatory universalists and Yoda as a feudalist obstacle.
A historical reference used to describe the counter-revolutionary ending of Game of Thrones where power circles reassemble.
as “pessimist believing in miracles”
The stance that pessimists are the only ones capable of moderate happiness because they are not disappointed by reality, allowing for 'political miracles'.
Stories he reaches for 19
A joke where a waiter offers 'coffee without milk' instead of 'coffee without cream' because they only have milk. It illustrates that while materially identical, the symbolic mediation (the specific negation) makes them different.
“Can I get coffee but without cream, please?... Sorry, we don't have cream, we only have milk, so I can only give you coffee without milk.”
Starbucks charges extra for 'green' coffee, incorporating social responsibility into the price so consumers can feel calm about their consumption.
“Starbucks... claimed, for example, openly manipulating us: our true, our cappuccino is cents more expensive than down the street. But of all that we earn goes to some starving children in Somalia, forests in I don't know where.”
Žižek jokes that organic 'half-rotten' apples are just rejected 'nice' apples sold at a premium to make buyers feel good, exposing the hypocrisy of organic consumption.
“My dream is that, you know, a farmer takes the nice apples out, then the what remains, the half-rotten apples he sells them at the double price as organic.”
Critiques the Glasgow conference where 'all the right things were said' but nothing happened, illustrating the paradox that actions lie and capitalism generates apathy through hyperactivity.
“In some sense all the right things were said there... But we say and we say and and things go on.”
A friend in the Yugoslav army refuses to sign an oath of sacrifice. The stupid officer writes a paper ordering him to 'freely sign the oath,' illustrating how social identity is constructed through forced choice.
“The officer wrote to him a piece of paper ordering him to freely sign the oath.”
After taking power, the Taliban made a pragmatic deal with China: China ignores their Islamist rule, and the Taliban ignores China's persecution of Uyghurs, illustrating a cynical form of multiculturalism.
“China will leave them alone to do their Islamist stuff, but Taliban promised: 'You do all the anti-Muslim stuff with Uyghurs there and we don't care about that.'”
The media fascination with 'Waldsterben' (dying forests) in Germany proved false, as there are more forests now than in the 20th century, illustrating how catastrophe fascination immobilizes action.
“I remember when first there was a talk, some at least years ago, in Germany especially, about Waldsterben, the dying of forests.”
Ecological rituals (recycling, buying organic) are compared to a soccer fan shouting at a TV, believing his actions can influence a distant game, thus avoiding the reality of impotence.
“I think some ecologists often act like a soccer fan who supports his team in front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from his seat, as if acting in a superstitious belief that this will somehow influence the outcome.”
Cites Liu Cixin's sci-fi novel about a planet with three suns causing chaotic weather, as a metaphor for Earth's current state where nature itself is chaotic and unpredictable.
“About a planet far away from Earth called Trisolaris, which has three suns, which rise and set at strange unpredictable intervals.”
Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, while masturbating during WWI, dreamed of debating abstract philosophical questions rather than engaging in sexual acts, illustrating that sexuality is always structured by a 'gap' and fantasy/thought.
“it was not screwing a man or a woman or whatever, it was debating with philosophers abstract questions.”
Points to piles of useless, inert objects (cars, computers) as the 'obverse' of capitalist production, representing the capitalist drive at rest.
“In these ever-growing piles of inert dysfunctional stuff... one can as it were perceive the capitalist drive at rest.”
Žižek uses the example of a child drowning to argue that we act as if free despite biological predetermination, highlighting the paradox of Protestant predestination where we don't know our fate.
“You should act as if you are free... True freedom is: I know I’m predetermined, but I don't know how.”
Praises Tarkovsky's film for depicting nature reclaiming industrial ruins, finding the sacred in the 'filth of this earth' rather than looking up to heaven.
“His experience of the sacred is you are down on earth, you put your head in muddy water, as if the sacred is in the filth of this, in the filth of this earth.”
Describes Japanese inventions like rain glasses with windshield wipers or inverted umbrellas that function but are commercially useless, offering a way to undermine capitalism from within.
“The fashion of producing objects which function but function in such a crazy useless way that you cannot commercialize them.”
Hegel was horrified by the English Reform Bill because it introduced a new political form (general vote) he could not grasp, proving he was open to the future, not an 'idiot' with absolute knowledge.
“Hegel is horrified by it because he sees something that he cannot grasp, something totally new is emerging.”
Mocks Prince Charles for boasting about having conversations with trees, rejecting this 'fake neo-spiritualism' in favor of treating objects as political comrades.
“Well, I like to go to a garden and have a conversation with trees. No, thanks, you know.”
Proposing a rewrite of Puccini's Tosca where Cavaradossi survives, embracing Tosca with triumphant music, to show the limit of creativity and the desire for happy endings.
“If you know the ending like she lies dead... he moves he says 'no no Tosca I was just kidding I’m really alive' and then embrace.”
Discusses the risky ecological proposal of dispersing aerosols to cool the planet, illustrating the deadlock where radical measures can trigger new catastrophes.
“This SRM is extremely risky. It could decrease crop yields irreparably, alter the water cycle and so on.”
Žižek admits to 'falling out' of sexual acts in his youth, observing himself from outside and thinking 'What am I doing here, my god? Isn't this too stupid?', illustrating the inherent stupidity of the sexual act without fantasy support.
“I as it were fell out of it, you know, like I observed myself from, 'What am I doing here, my god?'”
Works invoked 27
Ninotchka film
Source of the 'coffee without cream/milk' joke, used to illustrate mediation and determinate negation.
Georg Lukács's classical book, cited for the concept that nature is a social category.
Star Wars film
Žižek finds the films boring and disappointing, but uses them for the 'Stalinist' thought experiment.
Arrival film
Cited as a modest science fiction movie Žižek likes.
Stalker film
A Tarkovsky masterpiece Žižek likes for depicting nature reclaiming industrial ruins and finding the sacred in the 'filth of this earth.'
The Guardian journal
Magazine where Eve Wiseman wrote an article about a porn actor's reliance on Pornhub.
A book by Judith Butler, praised for developing the psychoanalytic mechanism that repression of desire turns into a desire for repression.
A sci-fi novel by Liu Cixin used as a metaphor for the chaotic, unpredictable state of nature (Trisolaris).
Harry Potter film
Referenced regarding Ralph Fiennes' role as Voldemort.
Moonfall film
A Roland Emmerich movie Žižek enjoys for its premise that the moon is an artificial mega-structure, illustrating the end of nature.
Praised for its 'sad ending' where Daenerys is liquidated and power circles reassemble, illustrating Thermidor.
Subjects of Desire book
An early book by Judith Butler, cited as part of the trend of good Hegel books written by women.
Tosca opera
Proposed to be rewritten with a happy ending to expose the limits of creativity and the desire for miracles.
James Bond film
Referenced regarding Ralph Fiennes' role as M.
Beowulf other
A northern dark myth Žižek prefers.
Doctor House tv
A TV series Žižek watches for the line 'Even your actions lie,' illustrating the paradox of today's cynicism and passivity.
Don't Worry Darling film
Referenced for its depiction of a desert universe with holes, similar to the dream movies.
Prisoners tv
A series with a similar dream-sustained universe plot, cited for its 'wonderful detail' of holes appearing in the ground.
Freud's title Discontent in Culture which Žižek twists to argue that modern discontent shifts from culture to nature itself.
A BBC report on the Venice Biennale, quoted to critique the hypocrisy of post-anthropocentric ideology.
Being Ecological book
Timothy Morton's work, from which Žižek quotes the definition of ecological awareness as appreciating the 'weed working its way through a crack in the concrete.'
A fictional film based on a real case, used to illustrate the trauma and inconsistency of transgender identity.
The Great Leap Forward other
The Chinese government campaign to eliminate sparrows, used as an example of ecological absurdity and the unintended consequences of interfering with nature.
Inception film
Referenced for its depiction of a dream sustaining a universe, used as a metaphor for ideological reality.
Used to argue that Hegel describes a system in decay, not an ideal future.
Nibelung other
A northern dark myth Žižek prefers over Mediterranean brightness.
Project Syndicate journal
The platform where Joseph Stiglitz's comment on war and the economy was published, which Žižek cites for its 'simple insight.'
People invoked 47
A friend from a previous visit 25 years ago; Žižek has good memories.
Guardian columnist whose report on a porn actor's need for Pornhub is used as an example of the structure of sexuality.
Gillian Rose positive
Cited as a woman writer who started the trend of good books on Hegel, which makes Žižek 'afraid of women'.
Liu Cixin positive
Contemporary Chinese sci-fi author; Žižek recommends his novel The Three-Body Problem as a metaphor for chaotic nature.
Prince Charles negative
Described as 'one of the great idiots' for boasting about having conversations with trees, representing the fake neo-spiritualism Žižek rejects.
Robert Pippin positive
A Hegelian with whom Žižek is often in polemics but respects; Žižek cites Pippin's question about what to do in a concrete situation when acting.
Mentioned alongside Chagall as an artist taught in Ukraine during the early Soviet period, despite them hating each other.
Robert Brandom negative
Identified as a 'liberal Hegelian' who, like Pippin, focuses on mutual recognition.
Cited as another woman writer of good books on Hegel.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Mentioned in the context of Putin's speeches claiming Ukraine was Lenin's invention, and the utopian moment of the early Soviet Union in Ukraine.
Addressed directly in the anecdote about Badiou's phone call.
Georg Lukács positive
Cited for the classical Marxist point that 'Nature is a social category' from History and Class Consciousness.
Jacques Lacan positive
Cited for reading the super-ego as an injunction to enjoy and for the distinction between enunciated content and position of enunciation.
Stephen Jay Gould positive
Cited in the Q&A to support the view that natural selection is contingent, not a rational process where the 'best' always win.
Gilles Deleuze positive
Cited for the view that politics based on specific experience (e.g., 'black single mother with AIDS') is a catastrophe; true emancipation requires universality.
Joseph E. Stiglitz positive
Cited for the insight that one cannot win a war (even against ecology) while maintaining a normal civil market economy.
Daniel Dennett positive
Cited as an evolutionary theorist who suggests language was originally an instrument to lie, not to tell the truth.
Judith Butler negative
Cited with respectful disagreement; her quote about humans playing a 'smaller part' is used to illustrate the paradox of modern subjectivity.
Referred to as 'ex, maybe future Trump' who called Slovenia a 'shithole of a country'.
Patricia Highsmith positive
Described as 'the greatest' of telling stories; Žižek suggests an evil sci-fi story in her style about the pandemic from the rats' perspective.
A friend and actor (Voldemort/M) whom Žižek jokes with about wanting to play a 'good guy'.
Former friend, now distant due to political misunderstanding; cited in the anecdote about interrupting a talk.
Giorgio Agamben positive
Cited as one of the populist right-wingers who 'got it' regarding the restrictive nature of state control, despite Žižek's political disagreement.
George Orwell positive
Cited for his analysis of the leftist attitude towards class difference, which Žižek applies to global warming: we rail against it but don't want to abolish it.
Adrian Johnston positive
A 'Lacanian fellow traveler' who characterized the current geopolitical situation as one of multiple acute crises where we know what needs fixing but do nothing.
Used as a rhetorical device ('Goebbels reaction') to describe the aggressive, propagandistic tone of post-anthropocentric manifestos.
Malcolm X positive
Described as a 'Hegelian genius' and 'true hero' for assuming the loss of African roots allows blacks to become more universally free than white people, rather than seeking a return to roots.
Kirill I of Moscow negative
The head of the Orthodox Church who gave Putin the title 'Chief Exorcist' and framed the war as a religious struggle against a satanic regime.
Timothy Morton positive
Žižek disagrees with Morton philosophically but praises his notions on ecology, specifically 'hyperobjects' and 'strange strangers'.
Louis Farrakhan negative
Representative of Nation of Islam style black identity politics, which Žižek rejects as fitting with white fundamentalists.
Ernst Lubitsch positive
Director of the film Ninotchka, from which the 'coffee without cream' joke is taken.
Napoleon negative
Described as a 'bad guy' who sent an army to Haiti that was defeated by slaves.
Jacques-Alain Miller positive
Žižek states he is 'on very bad terms with him' but quotes him conditionally to argue that religion is progressing by defending life against technological horror.
John N. Gray positive
Described as a 'severe critic who really hates me,' but Žižek agrees with Gray's assessment of living in a provisional time where we are forced to live as if free.
Hannah Arendt positive
Žižek is usually critical of Arendt but praises her short text on education for its observation on parental authority and the assumption of knowledge one does not have.
Roland Emmerich positive
Director of Moonfall; Žižek enjoys the movie's premise that the moon is an artificial structure, using it to illustrate the end of nature.
Walter Benjamin positive
Cites Benjamin's notion of 'natural history' (re-naturalized history) as a key concept for real ecology: accepting living dead nature.
Giacomo Puccini positive
Composer of Tosca, whose work Žižek proposes rewriting.
Vladimir Putin negative
Described as the 'boss' of the Russian official ideology; his goal has shifted to 'desatanization' under the influence of the Orthodox Church.
Cecilia Alemani negative
Curator of the Venice Biennale; Žižek hates art biennales and quotes her post-anthropocentric manifesto to critique its hypocrisy.
Andrei Tarkovsky positive
Žižek still likes Tarkovsky's films, specifically Stalker, for depicting the sacred in the decay of industrial civilization reclaimed by nature.
Karl Marx positive
Žižek advocates a 'Hegelian materialist critique of Marx,' suggesting Hegel is more aware of historical incompletion than Marx.
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited for the paradox of the super-ego and the theory of unconscious choice; Žižek believes Freudians can still tell us a lot about transgender identity.
Terry Pinkard negative
Identified as a translator of Hegel who has a problem with the death penalty as true recognition.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Žižek praises Hegel as 'desperate' and 'pessimist,' arguing he is more open to the future than Marx because he acknowledges philosophy comes too late.
Mentioned as one of two modernist artists (along with Malevich) taught in the same building in a small Ukrainian town during the early Soviet utopian moment.
Ludwig Wittgenstein positive
Cited for his diaries revealing that his sexual acts were accompanied by abstract philosophical debates, illustrating the gap in sexuality.
Transcript 32 turns
unknown
Thank you so much for coming today.
Thank you so much for coming today.
unknown
My name is Florian Endress. I’m a PhD student in the Department of Comparative Literature, and I’m the organizer of this year’s departmental lecture series. Before we start, I want to thank my department, most of all Valerie Kanka, for putting this event together and also the Humanities Council and the German Department for their generous co-sponsorship. For those of you who have missed our previous events, this year's series is titled Universality and Its Glitches. It consists of a total of seven lectures that interrogate the past and actuality, the pitfalls and emancipatory dimensions of a concept that seems to be helplessly out of fashion today: universality. All of our speakers, who work in a variety of fields ranging from philosophy, psychoanalysis, media studies and literature, argue against the grain of what seems today's default position, at least in the world of critical scholarship, namely the wholesale critique of the concept due to its imminent exclusions, if not the outright claim of the impossibility of any emphatic notion of universality. All of the speakers do so, not only by means of their rigorous academic work; they also do so as engaged intellectuals that don’t shy away from public interventions which go beyond the comfort of the university system. I am particularly excited to welcome a speaker who needs little introduction. I mean, the turnout of tonight is kind of a proof enough, I think. But just for the sake of formality and for the big other, I’ll do it anyway. Slavoj Žižek is a senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University and International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for Humanities in London. He is a Hegelian philosopher, a Lacanian psychoanalytic theorist, a Marxist social analyst, globally known for his sharp interventions in public debates, unorthodox pop-cultural commentary, and not least for giving jokes their full philosophical power. In doing so, Slavoj Žižek practices what one could call, in reference to Hegel, a concrete universality. That is, by confronting a universality with its unbearable examples, by creating short circuits that mark the symptoms of our symbolic universe. Slavoj’s numerous books include, just to mention three out of the many that there are: The Parallax View from Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism from and, most recently, Surplus Enjoyment: A Guide for the Non-Perplexed. The lecture that Professor Žižek will present today is titled Unbehagen in der Natur: On Thinking the End of Nature. There will be time, maybe, hopefully, for a Q&A after the session. But for now, without further ado, please join me in welcoming Professor Žižek.
My name is Florian Endress. I’m a PhD student in the Department of Comparative Literature, and I’m the organizer of this year’s departmental lecture series. Before we start, I want to thank my department, most of all Valerie Kanka, for putting this event together and also the Humanities Council and the German Department for their generous co-sponsorship. For those of you who have missed our previous events, this year's series is titled Universality and Its Glitches. It consists of a total of seven lectures that interrogate the past and actuality, the pitfalls and emancipatory dimensions of a concept that seems to be helplessly out of fashion today: universality. All of our speakers, who work in a variety of fields ranging from philosophy, psychoanalysis, media studies and literature, argue against the grain of what seems today's default position, at least in the world of critical scholarship, namely the wholesale critique of the concept due to its imminent exclusions, if not the outright claim of the impossibility of any emphatic notion of universality. All of the speakers do so, not only by means of their rigorous academic work; they also do so as engaged intellectuals that don’t shy away from public interventions which go beyond the comfort of the university system. I am particularly excited to welcome a speaker who needs little introduction. I mean, the turnout of tonight is kind of a proof enough, I think. But just for the sake of formality and for the big other, I’ll do it anyway. Slavoj Žižek is a senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University and International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for Humanities in London. He is a Hegelian philosopher, a Lacanian psychoanalytic theorist, a Marxist social analyst, globally known for his sharp interventions in public debates, unorthodox pop-cultural commentary, and not least for giving jokes their full philosophical power. In doing so, Slavoj Žižek practices what one could call, in reference to Hegel, a concrete universality. That is, by confronting a universality with its unbearable examples, by creating short circuits that mark the symptoms of our symbolic universe. Slavoj’s numerous books include, just to mention three out of the many that there are: The Parallax View from Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism from and, most recently, Surplus Enjoyment: A Guide for the Non-Perplexed. The lecture that Professor Žižek will present today is titled Unbehagen in der Natur: On Thinking the End of Nature. There will be time, maybe, hopefully, for a Q&A after the session. But for now, without further ado, please join me in welcoming Professor Žižek.
Slavoj Žižek
Thanks very much. I’m glad to be here again, almost at least quarter of a century ago. I was here with Ed, and I have good memories from that time and so on. And I hope, just hope, you will not be disappointed. Usually the title of my talk has absolutely nothing to do with what I, with the topic of the talk. This, today, I decided to give a very traditional talk, systematically about this topic and, and please don’t expect, I almost feel ashamed, I’m used to get interrupted to say something problematic about LGBT+ and so on, saying all the things wrong, you know. I, I renounce that today. Don’t be disappointed. Although I’m so sad I cannot afford a short introduction improvisation not to be able to go into this new conflicts, transgender, cis and so on, all that stuff because the more I think about it, the more I am tempted to oppose both sides. That is to say, on the one hand, of course, those who think, I don’t even know how to call it. I’m for theoretical reasons opposed to the term gender. I think in sex you have a certain antagonism which remains there. But okay, why do I oppose both sides? On the one hand, those who preach, like those who think sex is, sexual identity is basically biologically determined, I notice, I wonder if you noticed it, an obvious paradox, inconsistency. People who advocate that sex identity is biologically determined are terribly afraid of LGBT open education, you know, when in kindergarten and schools you are attentive to, you want to make to the small child visible, palpable, that there are other options, not just what appears to be his, her, it's, theirs, their biological sex. But then, if they believe in, in biological more or less determinism, why are they so afraid of LGBT+ propaganda? I think their secret belief is that they can be easily denatured, which means that they really believe even too much that sex is a sexual construct, you know. And then you can like overturn it with... On the other hand, those, what I oppose on the opposite side, it’s not, of course not, LGBT as such, it’s just, correct me if I’m wrong, maybe if you will be too bored with nature, we can go to a debate later in this direction. Like, I think the choice between, on the one hand, your what appears as biological sexual identity and what you, the term that is always used or regularly used, and I don't like it is, that you should be free to decide, to declare what you feel. Sorry, but for me, my greatest reproach to a certain LGBT+ ideology, which is, we are free to choose, blah, blah, construct, reconstruct ourselves, is that it makes it too easy. Too easy in the sense, in what sense? In the sense that many, no wonder many LGBT+ some, some of them are very bright, people they hate psychoanalysis. It’s patriarchal, binary, all you want. But I think precisely the trans topic makes it clear how traumatic, inconsistent subjectivity is. Like, you can feel one thing, you are substantially another thing. Did you see, I forgot the title, there was a Belgian movie, fiction, but based on a real case, about a boy who wants to become a girl. And with great support from his, her colleagues, doctors, parents even, she does it. But it involves so many traumas, you know. So, okay, let’s not get lost, we have nature to deal with. But my point is this one: Yes, I agree, your sexual identity is a matter of in some deep sense of free choice. But the notion of freedom here is very radical. Let me mention a simple case. Let's say you are biologically, you appear as a man, you want to become whatever you want, let's say to simplify, a woman. But you know, this is not like going to a pâtisserie and say, sorry, yes, till yesterday I was eating cheesecake, now I want strawberry cake. It’s something very traumatic, which involves a lot of even physical suffering, surgery, traumas and so on. So the freedom we are dealing here, it’s not a simple freedom of choice. It’s really something like unconscious choice. And I more and more think that the big contribution of Freud to theory of choice is that in our unconscious we are much more free than in our conscious self-awareness. The, the most radical choices, we experience them as necessity. The true choice is when you feel about something: I can't do it otherwise. Although it’s my free choice. But radical freedom appears as fate, if you want. And all these things are so complicated. I don’t know if you know it, something happened, it was a big trauma in my as your beloved President ex, maybe future Trump put it, shithole of a country, Slovenia. There was a really tragic fate, my wife knew that boy, girl. A young, young, already student, okay, early 20s, boy successfully became a woman. He went through all the surgery, blah, blah, blah, no problems, parents accepted it, friends, blah, blah, blah. Then something happened. On a certain day, she, now she, got official letter from from city authorities where you are registered as a citizen, that she is now officially a woman. She killed herself instantly. You see how a totally external thing like how it’s registered by the big other of state institution ruined everything. So the way, the reason I think Freud can still tell us a lot, Freud and today’s Freudians, precisely about transgender identity, I think that they are the most free people but they pay a price for it. Great price. And that's where they need, not our patronizing support, but, how to put it, you know when we have this polemics about how sexual identity should be playful, like today I’m gay, tomorrow I’m hetero, then I play another game and so on. Doesn’t, isn’t something patronizingly humiliating in this? All, all it somehow ignores the deep personal traumas, complexities and even I would have put it, the real profound suffering of changing your sexual identity. That’s the, that’s the problem. And I think again, psychoanalysis has a role to play here. But enough of this, let me begin. I want to, you know what’s my ideal? I did it once in Belgrade, I think. I went on and on with introductions, so that for one hour and a half and there was no talk. Just introductions. I loved it. Only one thing I loved more, there has to be a dirty joke before I begin. My friend Alain Badiou, now for political misunderstanding no longer such a great friend, did this to me. We were in a room like this, I was giving a talk. He sat, like you, Andrew, in the first row and his phone rang. And he answered it calmly. I went on with my talk, and he told me, while I was giving a talk to people: Slavoj, you are a little bit too loud, it disturbs me. Can you please speak a little bit less loudly? That’s my big dream is a different one, that I give a talk, then that's why I left it in my luggage there, then my phone rings and I keep it up and ask you, just wait a minute, and then talk calmly with my friend, but you know, not about theory, about this: "Oh, is that restaurant really so good? Shouldn't we pick up another restaurant?" and so on. That’s my dream, but dreams don't come true. Okay, let me begin with serious stuff. I began with these jokes because again, it’s a bit problematic for some of you, I hope, but serious stuff that I want to do. I want to begin with the paradox of super-ego, long ago noted by Freud. The more we obey the super-ego commandment, the more we feel guilty. That’s the basic paradox of super-ego, you know. The more you obey it, the more you are guilty. This paradox holds also when we follow Lacan and read super-ego as an injunction to enjoy. Enjoyment is an impossible real. You cannot ever fully attain it and this failure makes us feel guilty. A series of situations that characterize today’s society exemplify perfectly this type of super-ego logic: ecology, political correctness, poverty, up to indebtedness in general. For example, and the example is nature, ecology. Does the predominant ecological discourse not address us as a priori guilty? Indebted to Mother Nature. Under the constant pressure of the ecological super-ego agency, which addresses us in our individuality: What did you do today to repay your debt to nature? Did you put all newspapers into a proper recycle bin? And all the bottles of beer or cans of Coke? Did you use your car where you could or should have used a bike or some means of public transport? Did you use air conditioning instead of just opening wide the windows? and so on. The ideological, I think we should reject this logic, the ideological stakes of such individualization are easily discernible. I get lost in my own self-examination instead of raising much more pertinent global questions about our entire industrial civilization. This is why it is in a way quite justified that I feel guilty. Following the injunctions to recycle and so on, ultimately means that I follow rituals which allow me to postpone doing something that would really address the causes of ecological crisis. Let me go even a step further here. The burning of the Amazon forests cannot but trigger alarm. Are we really heading towards a collective suicide? By destroying the Amazon rainforests, Brazilians are, so we are told, killing the lungs of our earth. However, if we want to confront seriously threats to our environment, what we should avoid are precisely such quick extrapolations which fascinate our imagination. I remember when first there was a talk, some at least years ago, in Germany especially, about *Waldsterben*, the dying of forests. It was global fascination in the media. Like, the idea was, and there were obvious, that around at least then, Europe will be without forests and so on and so on. Now, according to some data, which are to be taken seriously, on our earth there are more forests than at any point in the 20th century. On our earth. Now, let me be precise here. I’m not saying ecological crisis is not to be taken seriously. It’s mega-serious. I’m just saying that this fascination with catastrophe, which immobilizes you, is one of the ways to avoid really confronting the crisis. How we avoid it? Precisely by surrendering to this fear. Ecology of fear, I think, has all the chances of developing into the predominant form of ideology of global capitalism. A new opium for the masses, replacing the declining religion. The rejection of anthropocentrism advocated by deep ecologists is very suspicious. There is a deep hypocrisy in it. What all the talk about how we, humanity, pose a threat to the life on and of the earth really amounts to is our, it’s our worry about our own fate. Earth in itself is indifferent. Even if we destroy life on it, it will just be one, not even the greatest of catastrophes that befell it. When we worry about environment, we really worry about our own environment. We want our own good and safe life. So, even when we profess the readiness to assume our responsibility for ecological catastrophes, this can be a tricky stratagem to avoid the true dimensions of the threat. There is something deceptively reassuring in this readiness to assume the guilt for the threats to our environment. We like to be guilty since if we are guilty then it all depends on us. We pull the strings of the catastrophe so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives. What is really difficult for us to accept is that we are reduced to a passive role of an impotent observer who can only sit and watch what his fate will be. To avoid such a situation, we are prone to engage in frantic obsessive rituals. Recycle all paper, bio-organic food, whatever, just so that you can be sure that we are doing something. Making our contribution. I think some ecologists often act like a soccer fan who supports his team in front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from his seat, as if acting in a superstitious belief that this will somehow influence the outcome. There is another dimension I developed this in my books repeatedly where I distrust common ecology. If you look at it closely, it’s often, how should I put it, it’s often this predominant ecology, it’s really not about doing something for nature, but making us feel good to be part of a large ideological project of saving Earth and so on and so on. This is my, I often repeat it, maybe you know it, provocative point. Some of my friends like to buy those half-rotten organic apples and not the beautiful genetically manipulated ones. But then I, some of them were open enough towards me, I asked them: Do you really believe that that half-rotten apple is any better? Because my dream is that, you know, a farmer takes the nice apples out, then the what remains, the half-rotten apples he sells them at the double price as organic. And you know what most of them tell me? They tell me: I know, I have doubts, but it makes me feel good that I’m doing something for Mother Nature. Don’t underestimate this, don’t underestimate this dimension. Let me go on. Ah, another thing. Did you notice how capitalism itself made out of being green a new market niche? That’s an old example of mine, maybe some of you know it, but it’s still my favorite. Now it's no longer to such an extent present, in Starbucks, at least years ago, it was all about green. They claimed, for example, openly manipulating us: our true, our cappuccino is cents more expensive than down the street. But of all that we earn goes to some starving children in Somalia, forests in I don't know where. And this is an ingenious trick. Why? Because usually we are split as consumer. I buy all the decadent stuff, but then I feel bad, I try to do something for common welfare. But here, this is for me the final step of the commodity logic. You include your social responsibility into the price of the commodity. It’s like, I don't know, now it's higher I think, cappuccino, and then cents, so you can stay calm and so on and so on. Let me not get lost in this direction, let me go on. Today ecology tends to perceive nature itself as the limit of our expansion. It enjoins us, humans, to renounce our hubris, our ruthless exploitation of nature. Now that God or tradition can no longer play the role of the highest limit, nature takes over this role. But what kind of nature will this be? Even when we imagine global warming, we still picture the outcome of global warming as a new stability with regular repeatable weather patterns. However, recent researches find it more probable that Earth climate leads to a chaos, true mathematical chaos, in which there is no equilibrium, no repeatable patterns. A chaotic climate would have seasons that change wildly from decade to decade, or even year to year. Some years would experience sudden flashes of extreme weather while others would be completely quiet. Such an outcome is not only catastrophic for our survival, it also runs against our most basic notion of nature, that of repeatable pattern of seasons. As such it reminds us, or me at least, of what the great Marxist Georg Lukács, in his classical book History and Class Consciousness, pointed out: Nature is a social category. That is to say, what we perceive as nature is always overdetermined by a social contact. So while, of course, everything there is is nature, we are part of nature, the obverse also holds at the level of our understanding. Nature is a cultural category. What strikes us as unnatural is always socially determined. In "Are We Entering a Post-Anthropocentric Era?", a BBC report on the Venice Biennale, we read that its curator Cecilia Alemani, and incidentally if there is a thing I really hate they are the worst of today’s ideology I think, are these art biennales because it’s a crazy gap between how an institution actually functions and its ideological legitimization. Did you notice how to appear at a Biennale you should always, these programmatic manifestos are utterly anti-capitalist? We are racist, colonialist still, we are destroying nature, we are exploiting Africa, whatever you want, everything is there and they even usually include themselves, like even our machine is, our Biennale is part of the capital self-reproduction. But it goes on. I mean, nothing changes. Obviously today we are at an extremely cynical stage of the functioning of ideology. And I’m tempted, but I develop this elsewhere, to go on to the end. It’s not only that it doesn’t matter if you criticize the ruling ideology, the system goes on. It is that in some deeper sense, criticizing it makes the system function all the better. Okay, let's go on what this lady Cecilia Alemani said. She tries to, quote, "imagine a world where humans are not at the top of the pyramid. They live in a more horizontal relationship not only with each other, but also with nature and animals, with organic and non-organic beings." To be tastelessly aggressive, when I hear such a line I have this Joseph Goebbels reaction, I draw my gun. Why? The least one can say is that such a post-anthropocentric vision of a horizontal relationship between humans, living beings and non-organic entities is only accessible to us humans. Non-organic entities are simply part of their environment, while animals and plants relate to it from their narrow perspective. They cannot imagine a global natural order, a small small part of which they are. You see my point. It’s in Lacanian terms, but also I can put it in Hegelian terms, the distinction between what you say, enunciated content, and position of enunciation. Yes, it’s nice to say: I’m just one of the species, part of nature, blah, blah, blah. But how can you say this? Isn’t it that you somehow presume that you are able to stand on your shoulders and have a global abstract look at reality where you are just one among the species? So, horizontal texture of being is no less anthropocentric than a pyramidal one. This is why it is not enough to repeat that we are part of nature, that we are not its center, so that we should develop new solidarity and accept our modest place in the life on our earth. Let me quote here Judith Butler, with whom I respectfully disagree here. "An inhabitable world for humans depends on a flourishing earth that does not have humans at its center. We oppose environmental toxins not only so that we humans can live and breathe without fear of being poisoned, but also because the water and the air must have lives that are not centered on our own. As we dismantle the rigid forms of individuality in these interconnected times, we can imagine the smaller part that human worlds must play on this earth, whose regeneration we depend upon, and which in turn depends upon our smaller and more mindful role." End of quote. I think that it is all too simple to insist that the water and the air must have lives that are not center on our own. Is it not that, but I think effectively the opposite is true. Global warming and other ecological threats demand our, our collective interventions into environment which will be incredibly powerful. Direct interventions into the fragile balance of forms of life. When we say that the rise of average temperature has to be kept below, and this magic number always oscillates, it's Celsius, it's Celsius degrees, we talk and try to act as general managers of life on earth, not as a modest species. The regeneration of the earth obviously does not depend upon our smaller and more mindful role. It depends upon our gigantic role, which is the truth beneath all the talk about our finitude and mortality. What we get here is the extreme form of the gap at work already in modern science and subjectivity. Modern science aims at mastering nature, but it is strictly co-dependent with the vision of humanity as just another species on the earth. This is the paradox we have to sustain in these crazy days. To accept that we are one among the species on earth and simultaneously to think and act as universal beings. Don't even ecologists admit this? When they say we have to keep the balance of our environment, again they speak from a universal position. They speak in an, if you want, extremely arrogant, in an extremely arrogant mode. And this gap between what we talk about and the subjective position involved in our saying and acting is I think crucial. I’m usually very critical of, small detour, of Hannah Arendt, but in her short text on education she says something wonderful, which I think is also the proper answer to all those who, neurobiologists and so on, who claim: Sorry, it can be proven, it can't be, it's more complex, but it can be proven that all our acts are biologically, neurally and so on determined. But you know what’s the problem here? As a Hegelian with whom I’m often in polemics but he is not a total idiot, no, I’m not patronizing him, there are only two types of people: total idiots and not total idiots. God is maybe, but there is no God up there, not an idiot. Okay, what Pippin says is that we should ask the question, what to do in a concrete situation when you have to act. Can you say why should, let's say pathetic, it’s a pathetic case, but sorry, you see, oh my God so pathetic, a small nice girl, a child drowning in a swimming pool or whatever. Now, I don’t think you will say, what the hell, why should I worry, I’m predetermined, my neuronal nature will speak and so on. You, you should act as if you are free. And here things get complex because you still, if you are a radical neurobiologist, you can say, yes, this is called "users' illusion." But again, it gets more complex and here I come to Hannah Arendt. Even ah, this is what explains another paradox. That’s why in theological matters I absolutely prefer Protestantism. Did you notice this basic paradox of Protestantism? I simplify things very much, but on the one hand Protestantism preaches predetermination. Everything is predetermined by God, if we are saved or lost it’s predetermined before even the creation of the world. But the trick is that you don't know how you are predetermined. That's why Protestant predestination doesn't allow you to just sit down, watch hardcore pornography whatever and say, I don't care, everything is pre... No, you are, and this is I think that this is the closest we can come to true freedom. True freedom is not, "Oh, I’m in a strawberry," again my old example, "I’m in a pâtisserie. Oh, I’m now free to decide: strawberry cake or cheesecake." No. True freedom is: I know I’m predetermined, but I don't know how. So I worry: what if by mistake I miss what I am predetermined to do? This crazy situation where, what if I miss the necessity? And yes, back to Hannah Arendt. It’s such a simple but deeply true observation. She writes in that short text on the education that our common situation as parents where today, who knows what will happen, war, hunger, chaos, and if a small kid, son, she, or it, I’m correct, I would like to be it, not they, as they are now trans, you know, because in my language it’s extremely ridiculous. "They" is still used in Slovene, but as this extremely flattering case, like if you are with a mega-authority, you ask him: "What would they like?" me. And it’s simply... But okay, what I want to say is that let's say a child asks you: "Father, what’s happening? What’s going on? I’m confused, I don't know, how will I survive?" and wouldn't the only honest answer be to say: "What do I know, what the hell, I’m also in a total mess, sorry guy, you are on your own, do it." It’s totally true. But at the level of your subjectivity it’s a fake. So isn’t this a beautiful paradox where, although it’s true that you as a parent don't have this all-encompassing knowledge, you have heroically assumed it. Although you know it’s a lie. And now I don't have time to go into it. This is not the same as the cynical approach advocated by some Lacanians, unfortunately today, which is pretend, pretend that authority is authentic and so on because otherwise there will be chaos. No, it’s something, it’s that you have to lie, lie in the sense of acting with authority that you don't have, but you have to lie as the only ethical, ethical way left to you. So, let's go on. The temptation to be resisted here is to continue to rely on our basic notion of nature and proclaim chaos as somehow unnatural. You see, this is the true anthropocentrism for me. When you look at chaotic nature, trees burning, blah blah blah, and say: "This is not natural." No, sorry. Nature is unnatural. Everything is unnatural. What do I mean by this? Please, if you want to read a really good science fiction novel, read Liu Cixin, contemporary Chinese author, he is in trouble now of course politically. Did maybe you read it, *The Three-Body Problem*? About a planet far away from Earth called Trisolaris, which has three suns, which rise and set at strange unpredictable intervals. So that the devastating hurricanes, droughts, floods and so on, that's the, that's the state of things there. And I think maybe this is what we are approaching. We are thus, I claim, entering a new phase in which it is simply nature itself which melts into thin air. The main consequence also of the scientific breakthroughs in biogenetics is the end of nature. Once you know the rules of the construction of natural objects, natural organisms are transformed into objects amenable to manipulation. And I think we should accept this. This is why now I come to the lowest of my guilty pleasures. It was, it wanted to be a big hit, but it failed. But I somehow enjoy it. You probably, if you've seen it, hate it. Did you see Roland Emmerich's last movie, *Moonfall*? It's horror. But you know what I like about it? The premise of the movie is that our moon is an artificial mega-structure constructed by the ancestors of humanity. The plot of the movie is that moon is approaching Earth, and we send very easily, a couple of hundred of miles, astronauts there, they discover a hole in on the moon, they enter it. And it’s a beautiful description of how on the outside moon is chaotic, rugged terrain, the more you go in, the more you see machinery and so on and so on. I think that, I think that this is what is happening. That that what people claim the end of humanity, the post-human era where we will be able through biogenetic and other technologies to manipulate our mind, will also mean the end of nature. Nature, human and inhuman, is deprived of its impenetrable density. This compels us to give a new twist to Freud's title *Unbehagen in der Kultur*, Discontent, Uneasiness in Culture. With the latest developments, scientific developments, the discontent shifts from culture to nature itself. Nature is no longer natural, the reliable dense background of our lives. It appears as a fragile mechanism which at any point can explode into a catastrophic dimension. This is why again, while there are three, four, five modes of what I call false ideological ecology, for example, it’s easy to enumerate them. The first one is simple ignorance. Ecological troubles are a marginal phenomenon, life goes on, nature will take care of itself. Then, the next deviation: Science and technology can save us, just trust science. The next one: Leave the solution to the market, higher taxation of the polluters and so on. Then, the already mentioned super-ego pressure: You are personally responsible and so on. And then five, the worst of them all: the advocating of a return to natural balance, to become respectful children of our Mother Nature. I think that this is such a dangerous mythology. This, you know, that this is the most dangerous anthropocentrism. This idea: Nature in itself follows some kind of a homeostatic balance, natural patterns, and then we humans with our hubris derail the natural rhythm. But just think about the fact that our main sources of energy still today, oil, coal, are remnants of past catastrophes which occurred prior to the advent of humanity. And we are the outcome of these catastrophes. Every, every good historian of our earth will tell you that without that mega-catastrophe, you know, which destroyed all dinosaurs and so on, there would have been no humans on our earth. So, you know, like... Yes, there is Mother Nature, but it’s a cold and cruel bitch, to cut a long story short. But this in no way entails that we should relax and trust our future. So, what is to be done? We are in deep mess. I just want to present you with problems. There is no simple democratic solution here. The idea that people themselves, not just governments and corporations, should decide what to do sounds deep, but it begs an important question. Even if the comprehension of scientists is not distorted by corporate interests, what qualifies them to pass a judgment in such a delicate matter? And we ordinary people have to rely on scientists. Plus, the radical measures advocated by some ecologists can themselves trigger new catastrophes. Let me take the idea of Solar Radiation Management, the continuous massive dispersions of aerosols into our atmosphere to reflect and absorb sunlight and thus cool our planet. However, this SRM is extremely risky. It could decrease crop yields irreparably, alter the water cycle and so on and so on. We cannot even imagine how the fragile balance of our earth functions. This continuously confronts us with the deadlock of the contemporary society of choice. In the standard situation of the forced choice, I’m free to choose on condition that I make the right choice. So that the only thing left to me is to do the empty gesture pretending to accomplish freely what is in any case imposed on me. And this mechanism is not necessarily totalitarian. I think that our entire social identity is constructed in this way. There is a free choice, but you are given the freedom to choose if you make the right choice. And I will repeat now, sorry if some of you know it, one of my favorite old stories. It happened to a friend of mine when he was serving years ago in the Yugoslav army. That after two weeks of introductory training, you had the big moment. All the soldiers were gathered in a big field, you repeated the oath, and then each of us has to sign his agreement like: I’m ready to sacrifice my life to defend my country, blah, blah. And the friend of mine did something breathtaking. He confronted the officer and says: "Am I obliged to sign this, or do I have a free choice?" And the officer told him: "Of course you have a free choice, because otherwise it wouldn’t oblige you." And my friend said: "Okay, then I refuse to choose." And the officer started to shout at him: "Would you like to be arrested, blah, blah." And after five, ten minutes of conflict, the officer who was a rather stupid guy I think, proposed this solution and my friend still has this paper, it’s on his wall as the most, his most precious document. The officer wrote to him a piece of paper ordering him to freely sign the oath. This is not some totalitarian joke. That’s how at the basic level our social identity functions. But today the choice really is free. And it's for this very reason experienced as even more frustrating. We find ourselves constantly in the position of having to decide about matters that will fundamentally affect our lives, but without a proper foundation in knowledge. To quote my severe critic who really hates me, John Gray, but here I agree with him: "We have been thrown into a time in which everything is provisional. New technologies alter our lives daily. The traditions of the past cannot be retrieved. At the same time, we have little idea of what the future will bring. We are forced to live as if we were free." End of quote. Maybe this is why it is so difficult to act today. Adrian Johnston, one of our fellow travelers, Lacanian fellow travelers, characterized very nicely today’s geopolitical situation as, quote, "a situation in which the world’s societies and humanity as a whole are facing multiple acute crises: global pandemic, environmental disasters, massive inequality, ballooning poverty, potentially devastating wars and so on. Yet we seem unable to take the admittedly radical or revolutionary measures necessary to resolve these crises. We know things are broken. We know what needs fixing it. We even sometimes have ideas about how to fix them. But nevertheless, we keep doing nothing, either to mend the damage already done or to prevent further easily foreseeable damage." End of quote. What does this mean? The situation today is not that, that's the paradox I wanted to imbue in you, is not that of you know, ideological mystification like: "Oh, they are telling us no, it's not really ecological crisis." No, we are bombarded all the time by, you know, all those metaphors: "It's five minutes to noon, we should act," and so on. But somehow nothing happens. We cannot act. So the usual idea that the truth is in our acts, not in our lives, has to be turned around. I, I must another of my guilty pleasures, I sometimes watch, it's over now, you know, that TV series about that crazy Doctor House. In one episode somebody says: "Even your actions lie." And that's the paradox today. Look at one of the most disgusting events I think recently. It was when, a year and a half, two years ago already, that Glasgow conference about global warming. In some sense all the right things were said there, you know. We have to act now, blah blah blah blah. But we say and we say and and things go on. And that's again today’s cynicism. Why are we passive? Where does this passivity come from? Today’s global capitalism generates apathy precisely because it demands from us permanent hyperactivity. Constant engagement in its devastating dynamic. So, I want to give you here another example, very problematic politically for some of you where also we can see how crucial it is not only with regard to our sexual mess, but with regard to the political situation. How, how important this Freudian split is. I don't know if you followed it closely, but when on the 23rd of February Russia attacked Ukraine, I was shocked by the reaction of my friends, which was a kind of a relief. Okay, now it will be quickly over. Our, it’s absolutely clear if you read retroactively the documents that our secret hope, desire, was that: "Okay, it will be over in two-three days, Russian commandos will take over Kiev, it's over, then we will complain a little bit but life will go on" and so on and so on. The real unexpected trauma is that Ukrainians resisted, you know. That was the big, we really don't like it, and no matter how much we try to help them now and so on and so on. But let me go on. The aftermath of the constant capitalist innovation is the permanent production of the piles of leftover waste. The obverse of the incessant capitalist drive to produce new and new objects are growing piles of useless waste. Piles, piled mountains of used cars, computers and so on. Like, it's a wonderful place to visit, you should, the famous old planes' resting place in the Mojave Desert. In these ever-growing piles of inert dysfunctional stuff, which cannot but strike us, strike us with their useless inert presence, one can as it were perceive the capitalist drive at rest. Objects. That's why if you want to ask me what to do, not at the level of actual change, but at the level of at least acquiring the distance from this crazy capitalist dynamic, I remember, I don't know if the fashion is still going on, but some years ago when I visited Japan the fashion was in full swing, the fashion of maybe you met some of them or read, the so-called, I’m sorry if I mispronounced it, chindogu, which means there was a whole fashion of producing objects which function but function in such a crazy useless way that you cannot commercialize them. It's meaningless. For example, there were glasses with, how do you call this to against rain? Windshield wipers so that you can... or there are inverted umbrellas so that when it rains water is collected in a bottle and you can always drink fresh water. I find something so refreshing in this, instead of being against technology, as it were undermine it from within, you know. It’s wonderful, it works but it's in some sense it's meaningless. That's why I still like Andrei Tarkovsky's films, exemplary his masterpiece *Stalker*, which takes place in a post-industrial wasteland with wild vegetation growing over abandoned factories, concrete tunnels and railroads full of stale water and wild overgrowth in which stray cats and dogs wander. Nature and industrial civilization are here again overlapping, but through a common decay. Civilization in decay is in the process of again being reclaimed by nature. That's why this is what I like about Tarkovsky's films. There is a lot of experience of a divine sacred there, but it's not our usual Christian experience. It's not our filthy earth and then you look up. No, if you saw some Tarkovsky's films copy them, you get them on on even on YouTube for free, like Stalker. His experience of the sacred is you are down on earth, you put your head in muddy water, as if the sacred is in the filth of this, in the filth of this earth. Here I would like to, since some of you I know like Walter Benjamin, a wonderful notion of Benjamin's. He defined natural history as re-naturalized history. It takes place when historical artifacts lose their meaningful vitality and are perceived as dead objects reclaimed by nature. And I think that to be a real ecologist today, this is the first step: to get rid of any notion of pure pristine real nature, to accept this weird like living dead nature which is not some real natural nature, but which is our civilization in its ruins being recaptured by nature. Here I want to define this as something that already in the early years of the Soviet Union, that utopian moment, but this was, I cannot resist making a political remark. You know, in this utopian moments, Ukraine as we know it today was born. Did you notice something if, sorry I cannot escape it, if you check it up, the two Putin's crucial speeches, 21st and 23rd of February when he announced attack on Ukraine, did you notice that he critically mentions only one name? You know which name? Lenin. He said Ukraine was Lenin's invention. He even says that the proper name of Ukraine should be Ukraine of, named by, in Russian, "Ukraina imeni Vladimira Il'icha Lenina," named Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. And that's why in a nice brutal irony when they were taking down monuments to Lenin in Ukraine, he says: "Ah, you want decommunization? Wait, when we will be there you will get real decommunization." The point being Lenin invented Ukraine. It's of course much more complex, but what I’m saying here is that at that utopian moment which ended up in failure, of course, but it's very interesting, Ukraine in the 1920s was maybe closer than other parts of the Soviet Union a place for, it was destined to fail but, a place of some kind of socialist utopia. Like, I would like to be at that point. You know that in a small Ukrainian town, I forgot which one, at some art academy they were teaching in the same building the two opposite modernist: Chagall and Malevich. They hated each other, but that was the situation. Everything was bursting. Ukrainian language, which was also prohibited in the Tsarist times, became a proper language with dictionaries, grammar books being written and so on and so on. Then with Stalin it all, it all changed. So what I’m saying is that in that utopian time we got this wonderful expression "objects as comrades." To learn to treat natural objects as comrades. Now let me be very careful here. This doesn't mean the bullshit of, "Oh, I communicate," this kind of fake neo-spiritualism. "There is a spiritual dimension in nature, I communicate with..." No, this is the stuff of King Charles, ex-Prince Charles, one of the great idiots who boasted in an interview years ago asked what do you do in the evening? "Well, I like to go to a garden and have a conversation with trees." No, thanks, you know. But it means accept our environment in all its complex mixture that includes what we perceive as trash or pollution, as well as what we cannot directly perceive since it is too large or too minuscule. Timothy Morton's hyperobjects. Along this line for Timothy Morton, I disagree with him philosophically, but here he has some very interesting notions. "Being ecological," for Morton, a quote, "is not about spending time in a pristine nature preserve, but about appreciating the weed working its way through a crack in the concrete. It’s also part of the world and part of us. Reality is populated with strange strangers. This strange strangeness is an irreducible part of every rock, tree, plastic statue of liberty, quasar, black hole and so on and so on." End of quote. So that's his idea. Nature is not pristine nature, it's precisely this mixtures, mixture of all forms of decay and so on and so on. Before I pass to the final part, I want just to give you two wonderful examples of how such mixture can function. Do you remember, you are close to Manhattan, I didn't experience it but I read in the newspaper, the fat, the fate of rats in Manhattan during the pandemic. Manhattan is a living system of humans, cockroaches and millions of rats. Lockdown at the peak of the pandemic meant that since all restaurants were closed, rats who lived off the trash from restaurants were deprived of the source of their food. This caused mass starvation. Many rats were found eating their offspring and so on and so on. And then the horror, some of my friends experienced this, when they opened the first restaurants only out not inside on the street, guests, customers reported that all the time rats were running between their legs because they were starved, they were desperately searching for food. This would be a nice view, you know. Why only pandemic for humans? What did it mean for rats? I can imagine an evil science fiction story in the style of Patricia Highsmith, read her, the greatest, of telling the pandemic experience from the standpoint of rats, you know. The horror and my leftist rat dream, they, rats tried to organize some war communism, you know. End of individualism for rats. Another example, which is even more tragic. You know that in at the beginning of the Great Leap Forward, the Chinese government declared that, this is official formulation, birds are public animals of capitalism because they are destroying harvest on fields and so on and so on. So there was a big public campaign to eliminate sparrows. Their nests were destroyed, eggs were broken, chicks were killed. Millions of people organized in groups and hit noisy pots and pans to prevent sparrows from resting in their nests so they when they got tired they dropped down and they were collected. It sounds nice and it was a totally successful campaign. There was just a problem. After the campaign was over, they all of a sudden discovered what positive function sparrows also played. They ate in the fields large numbers of insects and so on so that rice yields after the campaign were substantially decreased. It was hunger. One of the conditions of the big hunger at that point. So that this is wonderful absurdity, in Chinese government had to buy from Soviet Union million sparrows to repopulate them. So what's the problem with ecological awareness? I want to, don't be afraid I am approaching the conclusion, I want to quote a passage from George Orwell in where he deployed the ambiguity of the predominant leftist attitude towards class difference. He claims that all progressive guys want poverty to disappear, classes to disappear, but they don't mean it. It's a very perceptible observation. It holds for many so-called postmodern theorists today I claim. You do all the critical analysis and so on, but basically you do this just to make it sure that things will not really change. You know, it's like me, I’m saying this from my personal experience. If there ever was an obsessional neurotic, it's me. And I’m doing this, that a lot of academia functions like this today. You talk we are in deep crisis, panic and so on, but you talk just to make it sure that nothing will really change. How did I experience this? When I was just for a couple of months, I couldn't stand it, in psychoanalysis, I talked all the time, the minutes short Lacanian session that I was allotted, all the time. Why? Then I look deep into my heart. Because I was afraid that if I stop talking for a second, the analyst may ask me a really tough question. So you see the paradox. I was talking all the time to making it sure that nothing will change. And I think that this is how we are dealing today basically with ecology. So I will read a quote from Orwell, I will just replace poverty or class with global warming. Look now, the quote: "We all rail against global warming, but very few people seriously want to abolish it. So long as it is merely a question of ameliorating the lot of ordinary people, every decent person is agreed. But unfortunately, you get no further by merely wishing global warming away. More exactly, it is necessary to wish it away, but your wish has no efficacy unless you grasp what it involves. The fact that has got to be faced is that to abolish global warming means abolishing a part of yourself. Each of us will have to alter him herself so completely that at the end he, she, it will hardly be recognizable as the same person." And I take this very seriously, this statement. Namely, I had a certain although I was I’m fascist totalitarian privately, I like state order, total control, I was I was for obligatory vaccination. But I had a certain sympathy for those who opposed it, some American populist right-wingers, Agamben, because I think they got it... no, Agamben is not this although strangely he all... You know, it's so incredible how often today the apparent opponents speak the same language. I’m now finishing a new text of how we all make fun of Russia, but how Russian official Orthodox, Putin, Dugin and those guys ideology echoes the most fanatic American neo-Christian populism. Like, are you following what is going on now in Russia? Now officially, it's not one nut guy saying it, officially the goal is no longer denazification of Ukraine but desatanization. Patriarch Kirill, the, the boss of Orthodox Church, gave, gave an official claim a week ago title to Putin, "Chief Exorcist." And people are now talking of desatanization and so on that Ukraine is no longer a normal state but kind of satanic cult regime and that Western Europe is also becoming it and so on and so on. So I sympathized with those people who said but this type of control you cannot meet your fellows and so on, it definitely really affects imposes us to renounce some features how you socialize and so on which we did spontaneously perceive as part of being human. This was, this was real. So I think that's the difficult task ahead. We need more globalization, not less. We need global solidarity and cooperation more than ever. You remember, friends were sending me shots it was horrible. You remember last summer, a year and a half, two years ago in June, you remember there was a so-called heat dome in northwestern of the United States, southwest of Canada, Seattle, Vancouver. Temperatures almost degrees Celsius, which means at that point that part of United States Canada was warmer, warmer than Saudi Arabia, the Middle East and so on. But here I disagree with those who don't trust state authority and claim no, ecology movement it shouldn't be left to the state, it should be done from below, people fight locally and then only if necessary... No, sorry. If you look at measure them by ecological criteria, those parts northwestern of United States, southwest of Canada were not doing bad. They were in at the level of ecological measures pretty well. The problem is that this dome, heat dome, was the result of a global perturbation of how the air circulate in northern spheres of Arctic spheres of our planet. So this means that heat dome was a local phenomenon but it is the result of global disturbances, so we cannot it's meaningless to do it on the local level. The approach has to be global. Next point, and this is the really scary point. Science and technology today no longer aim only at understanding and reproducing natural processes. At the same time, we try to generate new forms of life that will surprise us. The goal is no longer just to dominate nature the way it is, but to generate something new, greater, stronger than ordinary nature, including ourselves. The dream that sustains the scientific technological endeavor is to trigger a process with no return. A process that would exponentially reproduce itself and go on on its own. The notion of "second nature," which is not just society reified in new nature, but literally new monstrous form of life, something like what happened in the past from time to time due to pathological contingency: deformed cows with two head heads, deformed trees and so on and so on. I think that it is this horror that religion tries to domesticate today. That's why I agree with some Lacanians who claim that far from religion being threatened by new technological developments, religion is approaching its golden era. Why? Because it is this horror of new, as it were, artificial nature running out of control that religion tries to domesticate. This fear is also has its clear libidinal dimension. It is the fear of the asexual reproduction of life. The fear of an undead life that is indestructible, constantly expanding, reproducing itself through asexual self-division, multiplication. And the greatest master to exploit this fear is the Catholic Church. Its predominant strategy today is that of trying to contain the scientific real within the confines of meaning. A quote, I’m now in very on very bad terms with him but here he wrote something which I still conditionally agree with, I quote Jacques-Alain Miller: "Far from being effaced by science, religion is progressing every day. Lacan said that ecumenism was for the poor of spirit. There is a marvelous agreement on these questions between the secular and all the religious authorities in which they tell themselves that they should agree somewhere in order to make echoes equally marvelous... We see this because it is revealed that... Žižek skips/stumbles here ...religion is planted in the position of unconditional defense of the living, of life in mankind as guardian of life, making life absolute. And that extends to the protection of human nature. This is what gives a future to religion through meaning, namely by erecting barriers to cloning, to the exploitation of human cells, and to inscribe science into a temperate progress. We see a marvelous effort, a new youthful vigor of religion in its effort to flood the real with meaning." End of quote. So allow me just to finish. The church’s message of hope does rely on a pre-existing fear. It evokes and formulates the fear against which it then offers a solution of hope and faith. The life that it promises in its defense of the culture of life is reactive life, a defense against death. And no wonder that the predominant version of ecology is the ecology of fear. Fear that pushes us to plan measures that would protect our safety. How then? What to do here? Because this is, admit it even if you are not religious, this is our common reaction. Horrible things potentially are the result of science, our intervention and no one wants to renounce science, but how to retain it within the confines of meaning. Meaning in the sense of global organic totality of humanity, its progress and so on and so on. To really conclude, believe it or not, I will now finish with something already mentioned in some of my books. I think that the only rational, if we are still capable of rational thinking, solution is the opposite one. And it's not a utopia, it is already happening. To resuscitate what Alain Badiou, with whom I disagree but here I still agree with him, called the eternal idea of revolutionary justice. What is demanded, the four components of Badiou's notion of justice, are: First, strict egalitarianism, egalitarian justice. All of us who deal with ecology agree with this. All people should pay ideally the same price in eventual renunciations. One should impose the same worldwide norms per capita of energy consumption and so on and so on. So, justice. Then, terror. Absolutely, I’m for terror of course, in the sense of ruthless punishment of all those who violate the imposed protective measures and so on and so on. You will say I’m dreaming here. No, I’m not. The first step towards terror as I gladly observed, you cannot have terror without whistleblowers. And I find an extreme ethical progress in the fact that in the last years whistleblowers were elevated into new heroes. Are we aware that we are talking here about something that historically was associated with terror? Third thing, voluntarism. We should drop this standard Marxist reliance on history is on our side. No, as again Walter Benjamin put it, history is not on our side. If we let history go on the way it is, we are just approaching some form of collective suicide. Again as Benjamin said, today the task of a revolution is not to help the historical tendency but to stop the train of history which runs towards a precipice. So again, it's voluntarism in the good sense that we cannot rely even, I think we should even renounce any subject now that nobody trusts the so-called old-fashioned working class. We are all and this goes on from the 60s in search of an ersatz, additional subject of emancipation, you know. It can be, it can be I don't know, third world traditional culture like as the fashionable people say a possible site of resistance towards global capitalism. I totally disagree. I think that global capitalism always liked aboriginal local cultures to survive. I mean just look at India where the moment British imperialists took over India their first idea was to strengthen Hindu religion. They reprinted all books. What they feared were Indians who would try to imitate them too much, becoming adept to technology... No, no, no. Every British imperialist was always ready to say: "My god, we are so vulgar in the West, an, an, a modest Indian farmer has more wisdom than all our vulgar Western civilization" and so on and so on. So it's voluntarism. And last but not least, what is traditionally called trust, trust in the people. Like yes terror but genuine popular terror. Ordinary people denounce those in power. Now you will say I’m dreaming. No, I’m not. You know who wrote a wonderful text? I don't fully agree with him but Joseph Stiglitz, the economist. He wrote, I don't know where I read it in some Project Syndicate marginal site for comments. He had a simple insight. He says that now that we are caught in a war, Europe is approaching a war for Ukraine, and also other global conflicts, we still act as if we can at the same time play the war, support Ukraine, but somehow keep safe our peaceful way of life. It can’t be done. He said you cannot win a war, even the war against ecology with all normal civil market economy going on. We will have... don’t be afraid, I’m not a militarist although I’m also not a peacenik, for peace. You know why not? The first problematic thing is that just think about it. I think that whenever you have a situation of occupation, occupiers are always sincerely for peace. Of course today in Palestine, Israel is totally for peace on the West Bank because peace means we have it. So it’s for me very problematic this situation of peace. Now you will say, but now we are maybe approaching a situation of a deadlock of front in Ukraine, maybe it's time to put pressure on Ukraine to accept peace. Maybe. But my counterpoint is but are you aware that we are in this situation because we supported militarily Ukraine? Without Western support of Ukraine, Ukraine would have been long occupied and so on and so on. So the, the stance I cannot now advocate concrete measures. It's A: Voluntarism without any guarantee in the big other. We don't have any higher necessity, natural order or whatever to rely on. We will be obliged to make to make tremendous risks. And the only way to avoid the trap to avoid the catastrophe is to is to withdraw from this totally annihil... totally renounce this pseudo-ecological I claim because it mystifies nature, idea of a deeper meaning in nature, of a deeper meaning of phenomena. Yes, there will be catastrophes, but the worst thing possible is to read these catastrophes as signs of a deeper meaning. And it's very difficult to resist this push towards meaning. The story that I often repeat maybe you know it, even in Israel I met some of them, a sect not even so small, hundred of thousands, which claims that the Jews because they were too decadent in Western Europe before Hitler, they deserved Holocaust. They were guilty, that's the meaning of Holocaust. I find this terrifying. This projection of meaning which makes things easier. So I advocate again, much stronger global cooperation. Isn't it absolute? Just think even independently of for what is ahead. Because of changing weather patterns and global warming, there will be much more immigrants, poverty and so on. Things like this did already happen in the past. But they were usually resolved in a violent way. One nation moved occupied another's and the stronger guy won and so on and so on. We cannot because of nuclear weapons and other things, we cannot afford a thing like this. So I think, and this is why I provocatively like to define myself as still a Communist, not in the sense of the Central Committee decides. No, if anything the 19th century, 20th century Communism was ecologically worse than liberal democracy. But I claim that if there will not be some kind of not abolishment of the market but let's say socialization of economy, in the sense of we will have to make decisions what to produce, how to coordinate, which cannot be left to the market. If we don't take this path, then we are lost. Thanks very much, I’m sorry if I was too long. [Audience Applause] There is in fact time for a Q&A. We have a microphone here. Alonso will bring it to you. We have like another minutes before we have to leave the room. So maybe keep it compact. I try to keep a list. I think the person in the blue sweater first. Cheers, good to see you again since Birkbeck. About the end of nature: Have civilization and technology disrupted the biological process of natural selection? With Hegel, therefore, are there rational principles organizing history? Could the Freudian pleasure principle be one of them, if not the most dominant of them all? Ah, that's a nice, I like this question. Like, no bullshitting. I was afraid that this your question will be followed by minutes of your own thoughts on it. Thanks very much. I would say I read a book on this and it convinced me. It's that you know that through its intelligence, even modest technologies and so on, in some sense humanity itself disturbed the process of natural selection. In the sense that we violate if we may call it truly natural selection and so on. On the other hand, let's not mystify again natural selection as something authentic, the, the truly more capable strong guy survive. All good from Stephen Jay Gould on, or good evolutionary biologists, make it clear that it's not a question of the best guy wins. It's totally contingent. The best guy is on the top, then some small thing like some natural disaster changes the environment and the previous guy is on the top and so on. So again, first don't mystify, I’m not saying you did it, but my aversion, don't mystify natural selection into some kind of an authentic process where true qualities emerge. And second thing: Be aware that with humans it's also a process of struggle for survival, blah blah, but it functions the moment you have historical memory and so on, it functions in a different way. Cultural selection is not just as some vulgar evolutionary guys think, the, the prolongation of natural selection. It's something totally different. And I like in some my books I wrote about it, this idea of how a certain, let's call it sexual aesthetic concern was from the beginning even in those so-called most primitive societies an element of survival. For example, there are now I like to read them although I cannot judge how appropriate their theories are, the idea is that you know we all admire but at the same time think how stupid they are those if you find them primitive Stone Age hammers with just wood and on it a big stone fixed and so on. And the idea is that all this the function was not efficiency. It was just this external spectacle show of a... how do you call the stupid animals who has this big mega-feathers? Peacock? Peacocks, yes. You know what's the big problem with peacocks? You have these gigantic feathers. In what sense does this help you in your survival? It makes you much more clumsy and so on and so on. So the theory is that the message is precisely this one, a similar one like why should all presents to your beloved in principle be useless? You don't give to your, sorry for my sexist perspective, if you like a girl you don't give her socks or underwear. You give her, I ring, gold and so on, which is precisely totally useless. And the idea is that it's something similar in the case of a peacock. It's: You see I’m so strong that I can carry on my back all this mega-shit and I still survive. So I like this idea that there is a certain as it were very primitive aesthetic logic at work there. Also, I like the theory of some serious evolutionary theorists that language, even Daniel Dennett says at some point this, that language was not invented to tell the truth. Like our language is not the prolongation of that stupid beast language, you know. You make this movement, it means there are a lot of flowers down there. No. Language is originally an instrument to lie. That from the very beginning. So again, I think it's a very complex question what you said, we have to clarify the terms more. Okay, in the front? Thank you so much for this talk, it was fascinating. When you begin like this, I see you sharpening your knife behind your back. Go to that point directly. Oh my god. Okay. Am I a communist or a filthy liberal? You say yes and wave a knife at me. Oh my god. The death, okay. Okay, I have a Latin American background so maybe this question comes from there. There is this debate between conservatives and liberals, just to put it simple, on gender and taking it back to the introduction you made. Where conservatives accuse liberals to spread an ideology of gender, and the liberals' thinkers reject that as a false accusation saying that ideology of gender doesn't exist. But I heard that in your introduction you actually used some of those phrases. So in what sense a gender ideology is an ideology, and why do you call it like that, and how do you explain this rhetoric used between liberals and conservatives rejecting... First let me make my position clear and say something: Ideology in our intellectual struggles, I think that this general culture war between postmodern liberals and traditionalists is a false war. In... okay but I don't want to get lost. Okay to your precise question. Ideology: first I have developed repeatedly in my books, I think that trans people experience I’m still for sexual difference, but I don’t conceive it as this fixed binary difference between masculine, feminine and so on, but as a certain deadlock, trouble, I take the expression "gender trouble" maybe more seriously than Judith Butler, inscribed into the very basic constitutive structure of human sexuality. And often I’m thinking what you know, as an old Hegelian, when you have this opposition, traditional conservatives attacking ideology of gender and gender attacking the opposite side as again binary patriarchal ideology and so on, I think that they both share something. Insofar as, how do you call the opposite side? the trans LGBT whatever, all I oppose them only insofar as they share a feature which is what: for conservatives you have something like, it even doesn't have to be fully natural, but a certain traditional form, patriarchal family, sexual difference and so on, which is the standard, and then they read what goes on today as the result of this as the result of the gradual disintegration of these standards, with the obvious idea, let's return to to the past. Of course this is ideology if there ever was one. And I use here the term ideology let's not go into what it really means in a very commonsensical way. A: it's factually wrong and B: it serves certain interests of those in power, men, blah blah, whatever you want. But where do I disagree with some version of LGBT+ feminists? I already basically said it. For me they enter ideology the moment they presume that in itself sexuality is some polymorphously perverse fluid state, you freely choose your identity and so on, and then from outside due to social domination, this as it were free flow is is controlled, disciplined by binary patriarchal logic. I think that the shit, the trouble, is already in human sexuality as such. And I will give you an example I used it, I’m so sorry, in my last book which is my favorite. A columnist in The Guardian magazine, Eve Wiseman, wrote some two years ago an article where she is horrified at something which she considers totally terrifying, our today's decadence and so on. It is, I’m sorry if some of you know the story, she was watching, and I like watching them, don’t I’m not a crazy guy who watches hardcore movies. I think they usually depress me so much that I think if you are an infomaniac or sexual perverse, the way to cure you is to make you watch these movies for hours every day if you don't get totally impotent and frigid. But she noticed something. They are very interesting movies about making a hardcore movie, where you see the whole scene, you know. The couple or whoever doing it and then behind the camera talk. Okay and in the movie, I only rely on this lady's, on this woman's report, I didn't see it, but the way she describes it, it's traditional. On a bed, a guy is, sorry I want to cut it short, screwing a lady, and in the middle of it he stops, steps back, and says: "My god, I’m sorry, I’m losing erection. Please, give me my iPhone so that I go quickly to Pornhub." But you know the crazy paradox of this. What do you want? You have the real woman there, and as if that's not enough, you need Pornhub, you need the image to do it. But that's I think the structure of sexuality. You always need a fiction, a fantasy support. You know. This is the fundamental gap in sexuality. That's why Freud's point is not: whatever we are saying we are secretly thinking about sex. No, it's: what we are thinking when we do make love, when we have sex. And it can be very strange things. For example, you know Ludwig Wittgenstein, the great philosopher? He was a little bit crazy so when he was serving the Austrian army, he was regularly in the First World War, he was regularly masturbating. And he wrote in his diaries, they were discovered recently and published by a friend of mine in Vienna, what his dreams were while he was masturbating. It was not screwing a man or a woman or whatever, it was debating with philosophers abstract questions. And there is a truth in it. You don't have zero level healthy normal sexuality is just my body, another's body. No. The structure is originally this gap. You have some nonsensical stupid real and it's all, you are always courting the danger that you appear, that you experience this brutal reality in all its stupidity. Look in a non-sexual way at sexual act. Can you imagine anything more stupid? Pure stupidity. So you need fantasy support. And that's why now I will do something very nasty, referring a little bit to myself, but maybe some of you... I’m here too reflexive, often it happened to me, sorry to be so open but it's not too embarrassing. In the middle of sexual act, when I was still young and doing it, I, I as it were fell out of it, you know, like I observed myself from, "What am I doing here, my god?" you know. "Isn't this too stupid?" And
Thanks very much. I’m glad to be here again, almost at least quarter of a century ago. I was here with Ed, and I have good memories from that time and so on. And I hope, just hope, you will not be disappointed. Usually the title of my talk has absolutely nothing to do with what I, with the topic of the talk. This, today, I decided to give a very traditional talk, systematically about this topic and, and please don’t expect, I almost feel ashamed, I’m used to get interrupted to say something problematic about LGBT+ and so on, saying all the things wrong, you know. I, I renounce that today. Don’t be disappointed. Although I’m so sad I cannot afford a short introduction improvisation not to be able to go into this new conflicts, transgender, cis and so on, all that stuff because the more I think about it, the more I am tempted to oppose both sides. That is to say, on the one hand, of course, those who think, I don’t even know how to call it. I’m for theoretical reasons opposed to the term gender. I think in sex you have a certain antagonism which remains there. But okay, why do I oppose both sides? On the one hand, those who preach, like those who think sex is, sexual identity is basically biologically determined, I notice, I wonder if you noticed it, an obvious paradox, inconsistency. People who advocate that sex identity is biologically determined are terribly afraid of LGBT open education, you know, when in kindergarten and schools you are attentive to, you want to make to the small child visible, palpable, that there are other options, not just what appears to be his, her, it's, theirs, their biological sex. But then, if they believe in, in biological more or less determinism, why are they so afraid of LGBT+ propaganda? I think their secret belief is that they can be easily denatured, which means that they really believe even too much that sex is a sexual construct, you know. And then you can like overturn it with... On the other hand, those, what I oppose on the opposite side, it’s not, of course not, LGBT as such, it’s just, correct me if I’m wrong, maybe if you will be too bored with nature, we can go to a debate later in this direction. Like, I think the choice between, on the one hand, your what appears as biological sexual identity and what you, the term that is always used or regularly used, and I don't like it is, that you should be free to decide, to declare what you feel. Sorry, but for me, my greatest reproach to a certain LGBT+ ideology, which is, we are free to choose, blah, blah, construct, reconstruct ourselves, is that it makes it too easy. Too easy in the sense, in what sense? In the sense that many, no wonder many LGBT+ some, some of them are very bright, people they hate psychoanalysis. It’s patriarchal, binary, all you want. But I think precisely the trans topic makes it clear how traumatic, inconsistent subjectivity is. Like, you can feel one thing, you are substantially another thing. Did you see, I forgot the title, there was a Belgian movie, fiction, but based on a real case, about a boy who wants to become a girl. And with great support from his, her colleagues, doctors, parents even, she does it. But it involves so many traumas, you know. So, okay, let’s not get lost, we have nature to deal with. But my point is this one: Yes, I agree, your sexual identity is a matter of in some deep sense of free choice. But the notion of freedom here is very radical. Let me mention a simple case. Let's say you are biologically, you appear as a man, you want to become whatever you want, let's say to simplify, a woman. But you know, this is not like going to a pâtisserie and say, sorry, yes, till yesterday I was eating cheesecake, now I want strawberry cake. It’s something very traumatic, which involves a lot of even physical suffering, surgery, traumas and so on. So the freedom we are dealing here, it’s not a simple freedom of choice. It’s really something like unconscious choice. And I more and more think that the big contribution of Freud to theory of choice is that in our unconscious we are much more free than in our conscious self-awareness. The, the most radical choices, we experience them as necessity. The true choice is when you feel about something: I can't do it otherwise. Although it’s my free choice. But radical freedom appears as fate, if you want. And all these things are so complicated. I don’t know if you know it, something happened, it was a big trauma in my as your beloved President ex, maybe future Trump put it, shithole of a country, Slovenia. There was a really tragic fate, my wife knew that boy, girl. A young, young, already student, okay, early 20s, boy successfully became a woman. He went through all the surgery, blah, blah, blah, no problems, parents accepted it, friends, blah, blah, blah. Then something happened. On a certain day, she, now she, got official letter from from city authorities where you are registered as a citizen, that she is now officially a woman. She killed herself instantly. You see how a totally external thing like how it’s registered by the big other of state institution ruined everything. So the way, the reason I think Freud can still tell us a lot, Freud and today’s Freudians, precisely about transgender identity, I think that they are the most free people but they pay a price for it. Great price. And that's where they need, not our patronizing support, but, how to put it, you know when we have this polemics about how sexual identity should be playful, like today I’m gay, tomorrow I’m hetero, then I play another game and so on. Doesn’t, isn’t something patronizingly humiliating in this? All, all it somehow ignores the deep personal traumas, complexities and even I would have put it, the real profound suffering of changing your sexual identity. That’s the, that’s the problem. And I think again, psychoanalysis has a role to play here. But enough of this, let me begin. I want to, you know what’s my ideal? I did it once in Belgrade, I think. I went on and on with introductions, so that for one hour and a half and there was no talk. Just introductions. I loved it. Only one thing I loved more, there has to be a dirty joke before I begin. My friend Alain Badiou, now for political misunderstanding no longer such a great friend, did this to me. We were in a room like this, I was giving a talk. He sat, like you, Andrew, in the first row and his phone rang. And he answered it calmly. I went on with my talk, and he told me, while I was giving a talk to people: Slavoj, you are a little bit too loud, it disturbs me. Can you please speak a little bit less loudly? That’s my big dream is a different one, that I give a talk, then that's why I left it in my luggage there, then my phone rings and I keep it up and ask you, just wait a minute, and then talk calmly with my friend, but you know, not about theory, about this: "Oh, is that restaurant really so good? Shouldn't we pick up another restaurant?" and so on. That’s my dream, but dreams don't come true. Okay, let me begin with serious stuff. I began with these jokes because again, it’s a bit problematic for some of you, I hope, but serious stuff that I want to do. I want to begin with the paradox of super-ego, long ago noted by Freud. The more we obey the super-ego commandment, the more we feel guilty. That’s the basic paradox of super-ego, you know. The more you obey it, the more you are guilty. This paradox holds also when we follow Lacan and read super-ego as an injunction to enjoy. Enjoyment is an impossible real. You cannot ever fully attain it and this failure makes us feel guilty. A series of situations that characterize today’s society exemplify perfectly this type of super-ego logic: ecology, political correctness, poverty, up to indebtedness in general. For example, and the example is nature, ecology. Does the predominant ecological discourse not address us as a priori guilty? Indebted to Mother Nature. Under the constant pressure of the ecological super-ego agency, which addresses us in our individuality: What did you do today to repay your debt to nature? Did you put all newspapers into a proper recycle bin? And all the bottles of beer or cans of Coke? Did you use your car where you could or should have used a bike or some means of public transport? Did you use air conditioning instead of just opening wide the windows? and so on. The ideological, I think we should reject this logic, the ideological stakes of such individualization are easily discernible. I get lost in my own self-examination instead of raising much more pertinent global questions about our entire industrial civilization. This is why it is in a way quite justified that I feel guilty. Following the injunctions to recycle and so on, ultimately means that I follow rituals which allow me to postpone doing something that would really address the causes of ecological crisis. Let me go even a step further here. The burning of the Amazon forests cannot but trigger alarm. Are we really heading towards a collective suicide? By destroying the Amazon rainforests, Brazilians are, so we are told, killing the lungs of our earth. However, if we want to confront seriously threats to our environment, what we should avoid are precisely such quick extrapolations which fascinate our imagination. I remember when first there was a talk, some at least years ago, in Germany especially, about *Waldsterben*, the dying of forests. It was global fascination in the media. Like, the idea was, and there were obvious, that around at least then, Europe will be without forests and so on and so on. Now, according to some data, which are to be taken seriously, on our earth there are more forests than at any point in the 20th century. On our earth. Now, let me be precise here. I’m not saying ecological crisis is not to be taken seriously. It’s mega-serious. I’m just saying that this fascination with catastrophe, which immobilizes you, is one of the ways to avoid really confronting the crisis. How we avoid it? Precisely by surrendering to this fear. Ecology of fear, I think, has all the chances of developing into the predominant form of ideology of global capitalism. A new opium for the masses, replacing the declining religion. The rejection of anthropocentrism advocated by deep ecologists is very suspicious. There is a deep hypocrisy in it. What all the talk about how we, humanity, pose a threat to the life on and of the earth really amounts to is our, it’s our worry about our own fate. Earth in itself is indifferent. Even if we destroy life on it, it will just be one, not even the greatest of catastrophes that befell it. When we worry about environment, we really worry about our own environment. We want our own good and safe life. So, even when we profess the readiness to assume our responsibility for ecological catastrophes, this can be a tricky stratagem to avoid the true dimensions of the threat. There is something deceptively reassuring in this readiness to assume the guilt for the threats to our environment. We like to be guilty since if we are guilty then it all depends on us. We pull the strings of the catastrophe so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives. What is really difficult for us to accept is that we are reduced to a passive role of an impotent observer who can only sit and watch what his fate will be. To avoid such a situation, we are prone to engage in frantic obsessive rituals. Recycle all paper, bio-organic food, whatever, just so that you can be sure that we are doing something. Making our contribution. I think some ecologists often act like a soccer fan who supports his team in front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from his seat, as if acting in a superstitious belief that this will somehow influence the outcome. There is another dimension I developed this in my books repeatedly where I distrust common ecology. If you look at it closely, it’s often, how should I put it, it’s often this predominant ecology, it’s really not about doing something for nature, but making us feel good to be part of a large ideological project of saving Earth and so on and so on. This is my, I often repeat it, maybe you know it, provocative point. Some of my friends like to buy those half-rotten organic apples and not the beautiful genetically manipulated ones. But then I, some of them were open enough towards me, I asked them: Do you really believe that that half-rotten apple is any better? Because my dream is that, you know, a farmer takes the nice apples out, then the what remains, the half-rotten apples he sells them at the double price as organic. And you know what most of them tell me? They tell me: I know, I have doubts, but it makes me feel good that I’m doing something for Mother Nature. Don’t underestimate this, don’t underestimate this dimension. Let me go on. Ah, another thing. Did you notice how capitalism itself made out of being green a new market niche? That’s an old example of mine, maybe some of you know it, but it’s still my favorite. Now it's no longer to such an extent present, in Starbucks, at least years ago, it was all about green. They claimed, for example, openly manipulating us: our true, our cappuccino is cents more expensive than down the street. But of all that we earn goes to some starving children in Somalia, forests in I don't know where. And this is an ingenious trick. Why? Because usually we are split as consumer. I buy all the decadent stuff, but then I feel bad, I try to do something for common welfare. But here, this is for me the final step of the commodity logic. You include your social responsibility into the price of the commodity. It’s like, I don't know, now it's higher I think, cappuccino, and then cents, so you can stay calm and so on and so on. Let me not get lost in this direction, let me go on. Today ecology tends to perceive nature itself as the limit of our expansion. It enjoins us, humans, to renounce our hubris, our ruthless exploitation of nature. Now that God or tradition can no longer play the role of the highest limit, nature takes over this role. But what kind of nature will this be? Even when we imagine global warming, we still picture the outcome of global warming as a new stability with regular repeatable weather patterns. However, recent researches find it more probable that Earth climate leads to a chaos, true mathematical chaos, in which there is no equilibrium, no repeatable patterns. A chaotic climate would have seasons that change wildly from decade to decade, or even year to year. Some years would experience sudden flashes of extreme weather while others would be completely quiet. Such an outcome is not only catastrophic for our survival, it also runs against our most basic notion of nature, that of repeatable pattern of seasons. As such it reminds us, or me at least, of what the great Marxist Georg Lukács, in his classical book History and Class Consciousness, pointed out: Nature is a social category. That is to say, what we perceive as nature is always overdetermined by a social contact. So while, of course, everything there is is nature, we are part of nature, the obverse also holds at the level of our understanding. Nature is a cultural category. What strikes us as unnatural is always socially determined. In "Are We Entering a Post-Anthropocentric Era?", a BBC report on the Venice Biennale, we read that its curator Cecilia Alemani, and incidentally if there is a thing I really hate they are the worst of today’s ideology I think, are these art biennales because it’s a crazy gap between how an institution actually functions and its ideological legitimization. Did you notice how to appear at a Biennale you should always, these programmatic manifestos are utterly anti-capitalist? We are racist, colonialist still, we are destroying nature, we are exploiting Africa, whatever you want, everything is there and they even usually include themselves, like even our machine is, our Biennale is part of the capital self-reproduction. But it goes on. I mean, nothing changes. Obviously today we are at an extremely cynical stage of the functioning of ideology. And I’m tempted, but I develop this elsewhere, to go on to the end. It’s not only that it doesn’t matter if you criticize the ruling ideology, the system goes on. It is that in some deeper sense, criticizing it makes the system function all the better. Okay, let's go on what this lady Cecilia Alemani said. She tries to, quote, "imagine a world where humans are not at the top of the pyramid. They live in a more horizontal relationship not only with each other, but also with nature and animals, with organic and non-organic beings." To be tastelessly aggressive, when I hear such a line I have this Joseph Goebbels reaction, I draw my gun. Why? The least one can say is that such a post-anthropocentric vision of a horizontal relationship between humans, living beings and non-organic entities is only accessible to us humans. Non-organic entities are simply part of their environment, while animals and plants relate to it from their narrow perspective. They cannot imagine a global natural order, a small small part of which they are. You see my point. It’s in Lacanian terms, but also I can put it in Hegelian terms, the distinction between what you say, enunciated content, and position of enunciation. Yes, it’s nice to say: I’m just one of the species, part of nature, blah, blah, blah. But how can you say this? Isn’t it that you somehow presume that you are able to stand on your shoulders and have a global abstract look at reality where you are just one among the species? So, horizontal texture of being is no less anthropocentric than a pyramidal one. This is why it is not enough to repeat that we are part of nature, that we are not its center, so that we should develop new solidarity and accept our modest place in the life on our earth. Let me quote here Judith Butler, with whom I respectfully disagree here. "An inhabitable world for humans depends on a flourishing earth that does not have humans at its center. We oppose environmental toxins not only so that we humans can live and breathe without fear of being poisoned, but also because the water and the air must have lives that are not centered on our own. As we dismantle the rigid forms of individuality in these interconnected times, we can imagine the smaller part that human worlds must play on this earth, whose regeneration we depend upon, and which in turn depends upon our smaller and more mindful role." End of quote. I think that it is all too simple to insist that the water and the air must have lives that are not center on our own. Is it not that, but I think effectively the opposite is true. Global warming and other ecological threats demand our, our collective interventions into environment which will be incredibly powerful. Direct interventions into the fragile balance of forms of life. When we say that the rise of average temperature has to be kept below, and this magic number always oscillates, it's Celsius, it's Celsius degrees, we talk and try to act as general managers of life on earth, not as a modest species. The regeneration of the earth obviously does not depend upon our smaller and more mindful role. It depends upon our gigantic role, which is the truth beneath all the talk about our finitude and mortality. What we get here is the extreme form of the gap at work already in modern science and subjectivity. Modern science aims at mastering nature, but it is strictly co-dependent with the vision of humanity as just another species on the earth. This is the paradox we have to sustain in these crazy days. To accept that we are one among the species on earth and simultaneously to think and act as universal beings. Don't even ecologists admit this? When they say we have to keep the balance of our environment, again they speak from a universal position. They speak in an, if you want, extremely arrogant, in an extremely arrogant mode. And this gap between what we talk about and the subjective position involved in our saying and acting is I think crucial. I’m usually very critical of, small detour, of Hannah Arendt, but in her short text on education she says something wonderful, which I think is also the proper answer to all those who, neurobiologists and so on, who claim: Sorry, it can be proven, it can't be, it's more complex, but it can be proven that all our acts are biologically, neurally and so on determined. But you know what’s the problem here? As a Hegelian with whom I’m often in polemics but he is not a total idiot, no, I’m not patronizing him, there are only two types of people: total idiots and not total idiots. God is maybe, but there is no God up there, not an idiot. Okay, what Pippin says is that we should ask the question, what to do in a concrete situation when you have to act. Can you say why should, let's say pathetic, it’s a pathetic case, but sorry, you see, oh my God so pathetic, a small nice girl, a child drowning in a swimming pool or whatever. Now, I don’t think you will say, what the hell, why should I worry, I’m predetermined, my neuronal nature will speak and so on. You, you should act as if you are free. And here things get complex because you still, if you are a radical neurobiologist, you can say, yes, this is called "users' illusion." But again, it gets more complex and here I come to Hannah Arendt. Even ah, this is what explains another paradox. That’s why in theological matters I absolutely prefer Protestantism. Did you notice this basic paradox of Protestantism? I simplify things very much, but on the one hand Protestantism preaches predetermination. Everything is predetermined by God, if we are saved or lost it’s predetermined before even the creation of the world. But the trick is that you don't know how you are predetermined. That's why Protestant predestination doesn't allow you to just sit down, watch hardcore pornography whatever and say, I don't care, everything is pre... No, you are, and this is I think that this is the closest we can come to true freedom. True freedom is not, "Oh, I’m in a strawberry," again my old example, "I’m in a pâtisserie. Oh, I’m now free to decide: strawberry cake or cheesecake." No. True freedom is: I know I’m predetermined, but I don't know how. So I worry: what if by mistake I miss what I am predetermined to do? This crazy situation where, what if I miss the necessity? And yes, back to Hannah Arendt. It’s such a simple but deeply true observation. She writes in that short text on the education that our common situation as parents where today, who knows what will happen, war, hunger, chaos, and if a small kid, son, she, or it, I’m correct, I would like to be it, not they, as they are now trans, you know, because in my language it’s extremely ridiculous. "They" is still used in Slovene, but as this extremely flattering case, like if you are with a mega-authority, you ask him: "What would they like?" me. And it’s simply... But okay, what I want to say is that let's say a child asks you: "Father, what’s happening? What’s going on? I’m confused, I don't know, how will I survive?" and wouldn't the only honest answer be to say: "What do I know, what the hell, I’m also in a total mess, sorry guy, you are on your own, do it." It’s totally true. But at the level of your subjectivity it’s a fake. So isn’t this a beautiful paradox where, although it’s true that you as a parent don't have this all-encompassing knowledge, you have heroically assumed it. Although you know it’s a lie. And now I don't have time to go into it. This is not the same as the cynical approach advocated by some Lacanians, unfortunately today, which is pretend, pretend that authority is authentic and so on because otherwise there will be chaos. No, it’s something, it’s that you have to lie, lie in the sense of acting with authority that you don't have, but you have to lie as the only ethical, ethical way left to you. So, let's go on. The temptation to be resisted here is to continue to rely on our basic notion of nature and proclaim chaos as somehow unnatural. You see, this is the true anthropocentrism for me. When you look at chaotic nature, trees burning, blah blah blah, and say: "This is not natural." No, sorry. Nature is unnatural. Everything is unnatural. What do I mean by this? Please, if you want to read a really good science fiction novel, read Liu Cixin, contemporary Chinese author, he is in trouble now of course politically. Did maybe you read it, *The Three-Body Problem*? About a planet far away from Earth called Trisolaris, which has three suns, which rise and set at strange unpredictable intervals. So that the devastating hurricanes, droughts, floods and so on, that's the, that's the state of things there. And I think maybe this is what we are approaching. We are thus, I claim, entering a new phase in which it is simply nature itself which melts into thin air. The main consequence also of the scientific breakthroughs in biogenetics is the end of nature. Once you know the rules of the construction of natural objects, natural organisms are transformed into objects amenable to manipulation. And I think we should accept this. This is why now I come to the lowest of my guilty pleasures. It was, it wanted to be a big hit, but it failed. But I somehow enjoy it. You probably, if you've seen it, hate it. Did you see Roland Emmerich's last movie, *Moonfall*? It's horror. But you know what I like about it? The premise of the movie is that our moon is an artificial mega-structure constructed by the ancestors of humanity. The plot of the movie is that moon is approaching Earth, and we send very easily, a couple of hundred of miles, astronauts there, they discover a hole in on the moon, they enter it. And it’s a beautiful description of how on the outside moon is chaotic, rugged terrain, the more you go in, the more you see machinery and so on and so on. I think that, I think that this is what is happening. That that what people claim the end of humanity, the post-human era where we will be able through biogenetic and other technologies to manipulate our mind, will also mean the end of nature. Nature, human and inhuman, is deprived of its impenetrable density. This compels us to give a new twist to Freud's title *Unbehagen in der Kultur*, Discontent, Uneasiness in Culture. With the latest developments, scientific developments, the discontent shifts from culture to nature itself. Nature is no longer natural, the reliable dense background of our lives. It appears as a fragile mechanism which at any point can explode into a catastrophic dimension. This is why again, while there are three, four, five modes of what I call false ideological ecology, for example, it’s easy to enumerate them. The first one is simple ignorance. Ecological troubles are a marginal phenomenon, life goes on, nature will take care of itself. Then, the next deviation: Science and technology can save us, just trust science. The next one: Leave the solution to the market, higher taxation of the polluters and so on. Then, the already mentioned super-ego pressure: You are personally responsible and so on. And then five, the worst of them all: the advocating of a return to natural balance, to become respectful children of our Mother Nature. I think that this is such a dangerous mythology. This, you know, that this is the most dangerous anthropocentrism. This idea: Nature in itself follows some kind of a homeostatic balance, natural patterns, and then we humans with our hubris derail the natural rhythm. But just think about the fact that our main sources of energy still today, oil, coal, are remnants of past catastrophes which occurred prior to the advent of humanity. And we are the outcome of these catastrophes. Every, every good historian of our earth will tell you that without that mega-catastrophe, you know, which destroyed all dinosaurs and so on, there would have been no humans on our earth. So, you know, like... Yes, there is Mother Nature, but it’s a cold and cruel bitch, to cut a long story short. But this in no way entails that we should relax and trust our future. So, what is to be done? We are in deep mess. I just want to present you with problems. There is no simple democratic solution here. The idea that people themselves, not just governments and corporations, should decide what to do sounds deep, but it begs an important question. Even if the comprehension of scientists is not distorted by corporate interests, what qualifies them to pass a judgment in such a delicate matter? And we ordinary people have to rely on scientists. Plus, the radical measures advocated by some ecologists can themselves trigger new catastrophes. Let me take the idea of Solar Radiation Management, the continuous massive dispersions of aerosols into our atmosphere to reflect and absorb sunlight and thus cool our planet. However, this SRM is extremely risky. It could decrease crop yields irreparably, alter the water cycle and so on and so on. We cannot even imagine how the fragile balance of our earth functions. This continuously confronts us with the deadlock of the contemporary society of choice. In the standard situation of the forced choice, I’m free to choose on condition that I make the right choice. So that the only thing left to me is to do the empty gesture pretending to accomplish freely what is in any case imposed on me. And this mechanism is not necessarily totalitarian. I think that our entire social identity is constructed in this way. There is a free choice, but you are given the freedom to choose if you make the right choice. And I will repeat now, sorry if some of you know it, one of my favorite old stories. It happened to a friend of mine when he was serving years ago in the Yugoslav army. That after two weeks of introductory training, you had the big moment. All the soldiers were gathered in a big field, you repeated the oath, and then each of us has to sign his agreement like: I’m ready to sacrifice my life to defend my country, blah, blah. And the friend of mine did something breathtaking. He confronted the officer and says: "Am I obliged to sign this, or do I have a free choice?" And the officer told him: "Of course you have a free choice, because otherwise it wouldn’t oblige you." And my friend said: "Okay, then I refuse to choose." And the officer started to shout at him: "Would you like to be arrested, blah, blah." And after five, ten minutes of conflict, the officer who was a rather stupid guy I think, proposed this solution and my friend still has this paper, it’s on his wall as the most, his most precious document. The officer wrote to him a piece of paper ordering him to freely sign the oath. This is not some totalitarian joke. That’s how at the basic level our social identity functions. But today the choice really is free. And it's for this very reason experienced as even more frustrating. We find ourselves constantly in the position of having to decide about matters that will fundamentally affect our lives, but without a proper foundation in knowledge. To quote my severe critic who really hates me, John Gray, but here I agree with him: "We have been thrown into a time in which everything is provisional. New technologies alter our lives daily. The traditions of the past cannot be retrieved. At the same time, we have little idea of what the future will bring. We are forced to live as if we were free." End of quote. Maybe this is why it is so difficult to act today. Adrian Johnston, one of our fellow travelers, Lacanian fellow travelers, characterized very nicely today’s geopolitical situation as, quote, "a situation in which the world’s societies and humanity as a whole are facing multiple acute crises: global pandemic, environmental disasters, massive inequality, ballooning poverty, potentially devastating wars and so on. Yet we seem unable to take the admittedly radical or revolutionary measures necessary to resolve these crises. We know things are broken. We know what needs fixing it. We even sometimes have ideas about how to fix them. But nevertheless, we keep doing nothing, either to mend the damage already done or to prevent further easily foreseeable damage." End of quote. What does this mean? The situation today is not that, that's the paradox I wanted to imbue in you, is not that of you know, ideological mystification like: "Oh, they are telling us no, it's not really ecological crisis." No, we are bombarded all the time by, you know, all those metaphors: "It's five minutes to noon, we should act," and so on. But somehow nothing happens. We cannot act. So the usual idea that the truth is in our acts, not in our lives, has to be turned around. I, I must another of my guilty pleasures, I sometimes watch, it's over now, you know, that TV series about that crazy Doctor House. In one episode somebody says: "Even your actions lie." And that's the paradox today. Look at one of the most disgusting events I think recently. It was when, a year and a half, two years ago already, that Glasgow conference about global warming. In some sense all the right things were said there, you know. We have to act now, blah blah blah blah. But we say and we say and and things go on. And that's again today’s cynicism. Why are we passive? Where does this passivity come from? Today’s global capitalism generates apathy precisely because it demands from us permanent hyperactivity. Constant engagement in its devastating dynamic. So, I want to give you here another example, very problematic politically for some of you where also we can see how crucial it is not only with regard to our sexual mess, but with regard to the political situation. How, how important this Freudian split is. I don't know if you followed it closely, but when on the 23rd of February Russia attacked Ukraine, I was shocked by the reaction of my friends, which was a kind of a relief. Okay, now it will be quickly over. Our, it’s absolutely clear if you read retroactively the documents that our secret hope, desire, was that: "Okay, it will be over in two-three days, Russian commandos will take over Kiev, it's over, then we will complain a little bit but life will go on" and so on and so on. The real unexpected trauma is that Ukrainians resisted, you know. That was the big, we really don't like it, and no matter how much we try to help them now and so on and so on. But let me go on. The aftermath of the constant capitalist innovation is the permanent production of the piles of leftover waste. The obverse of the incessant capitalist drive to produce new and new objects are growing piles of useless waste. Piles, piled mountains of used cars, computers and so on. Like, it's a wonderful place to visit, you should, the famous old planes' resting place in the Mojave Desert. In these ever-growing piles of inert dysfunctional stuff, which cannot but strike us, strike us with their useless inert presence, one can as it were perceive the capitalist drive at rest. Objects. That's why if you want to ask me what to do, not at the level of actual change, but at the level of at least acquiring the distance from this crazy capitalist dynamic, I remember, I don't know if the fashion is still going on, but some years ago when I visited Japan the fashion was in full swing, the fashion of maybe you met some of them or read, the so-called, I’m sorry if I mispronounced it, chindogu, which means there was a whole fashion of producing objects which function but function in such a crazy useless way that you cannot commercialize them. It's meaningless. For example, there were glasses with, how do you call this to against rain? Windshield wipers so that you can... or there are inverted umbrellas so that when it rains water is collected in a bottle and you can always drink fresh water. I find something so refreshing in this, instead of being against technology, as it were undermine it from within, you know. It’s wonderful, it works but it's in some sense it's meaningless. That's why I still like Andrei Tarkovsky's films, exemplary his masterpiece *Stalker*, which takes place in a post-industrial wasteland with wild vegetation growing over abandoned factories, concrete tunnels and railroads full of stale water and wild overgrowth in which stray cats and dogs wander. Nature and industrial civilization are here again overlapping, but through a common decay. Civilization in decay is in the process of again being reclaimed by nature. That's why this is what I like about Tarkovsky's films. There is a lot of experience of a divine sacred there, but it's not our usual Christian experience. It's not our filthy earth and then you look up. No, if you saw some Tarkovsky's films copy them, you get them on on even on YouTube for free, like Stalker. His experience of the sacred is you are down on earth, you put your head in muddy water, as if the sacred is in the filth of this, in the filth of this earth. Here I would like to, since some of you I know like Walter Benjamin, a wonderful notion of Benjamin's. He defined natural history as re-naturalized history. It takes place when historical artifacts lose their meaningful vitality and are perceived as dead objects reclaimed by nature. And I think that to be a real ecologist today, this is the first step: to get rid of any notion of pure pristine real nature, to accept this weird like living dead nature which is not some real natural nature, but which is our civilization in its ruins being recaptured by nature. Here I want to define this as something that already in the early years of the Soviet Union, that utopian moment, but this was, I cannot resist making a political remark. You know, in this utopian moments, Ukraine as we know it today was born. Did you notice something if, sorry I cannot escape it, if you check it up, the two Putin's crucial speeches, 21st and 23rd of February when he announced attack on Ukraine, did you notice that he critically mentions only one name? You know which name? Lenin. He said Ukraine was Lenin's invention. He even says that the proper name of Ukraine should be Ukraine of, named by, in Russian, "Ukraina imeni Vladimira Il'icha Lenina," named Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. And that's why in a nice brutal irony when they were taking down monuments to Lenin in Ukraine, he says: "Ah, you want decommunization? Wait, when we will be there you will get real decommunization." The point being Lenin invented Ukraine. It's of course much more complex, but what I’m saying here is that at that utopian moment which ended up in failure, of course, but it's very interesting, Ukraine in the 1920s was maybe closer than other parts of the Soviet Union a place for, it was destined to fail but, a place of some kind of socialist utopia. Like, I would like to be at that point. You know that in a small Ukrainian town, I forgot which one, at some art academy they were teaching in the same building the two opposite modernist: Chagall and Malevich. They hated each other, but that was the situation. Everything was bursting. Ukrainian language, which was also prohibited in the Tsarist times, became a proper language with dictionaries, grammar books being written and so on and so on. Then with Stalin it all, it all changed. So what I’m saying is that in that utopian time we got this wonderful expression "objects as comrades." To learn to treat natural objects as comrades. Now let me be very careful here. This doesn't mean the bullshit of, "Oh, I communicate," this kind of fake neo-spiritualism. "There is a spiritual dimension in nature, I communicate with..." No, this is the stuff of King Charles, ex-Prince Charles, one of the great idiots who boasted in an interview years ago asked what do you do in the evening? "Well, I like to go to a garden and have a conversation with trees." No, thanks, you know. But it means accept our environment in all its complex mixture that includes what we perceive as trash or pollution, as well as what we cannot directly perceive since it is too large or too minuscule. Timothy Morton's hyperobjects. Along this line for Timothy Morton, I disagree with him philosophically, but here he has some very interesting notions. "Being ecological," for Morton, a quote, "is not about spending time in a pristine nature preserve, but about appreciating the weed working its way through a crack in the concrete. It’s also part of the world and part of us. Reality is populated with strange strangers. This strange strangeness is an irreducible part of every rock, tree, plastic statue of liberty, quasar, black hole and so on and so on." End of quote. So that's his idea. Nature is not pristine nature, it's precisely this mixtures, mixture of all forms of decay and so on and so on. Before I pass to the final part, I want just to give you two wonderful examples of how such mixture can function. Do you remember, you are close to Manhattan, I didn't experience it but I read in the newspaper, the fat, the fate of rats in Manhattan during the pandemic. Manhattan is a living system of humans, cockroaches and millions of rats. Lockdown at the peak of the pandemic meant that since all restaurants were closed, rats who lived off the trash from restaurants were deprived of the source of their food. This caused mass starvation. Many rats were found eating their offspring and so on and so on. And then the horror, some of my friends experienced this, when they opened the first restaurants only out not inside on the street, guests, customers reported that all the time rats were running between their legs because they were starved, they were desperately searching for food. This would be a nice view, you know. Why only pandemic for humans? What did it mean for rats? I can imagine an evil science fiction story in the style of Patricia Highsmith, read her, the greatest, of telling the pandemic experience from the standpoint of rats, you know. The horror and my leftist rat dream, they, rats tried to organize some war communism, you know. End of individualism for rats. Another example, which is even more tragic. You know that in at the beginning of the Great Leap Forward, the Chinese government declared that, this is official formulation, birds are public animals of capitalism because they are destroying harvest on fields and so on and so on. So there was a big public campaign to eliminate sparrows. Their nests were destroyed, eggs were broken, chicks were killed. Millions of people organized in groups and hit noisy pots and pans to prevent sparrows from resting in their nests so they when they got tired they dropped down and they were collected. It sounds nice and it was a totally successful campaign. There was just a problem. After the campaign was over, they all of a sudden discovered what positive function sparrows also played. They ate in the fields large numbers of insects and so on so that rice yields after the campaign were substantially decreased. It was hunger. One of the conditions of the big hunger at that point. So that this is wonderful absurdity, in Chinese government had to buy from Soviet Union million sparrows to repopulate them. So what's the problem with ecological awareness? I want to, don't be afraid I am approaching the conclusion, I want to quote a passage from George Orwell in where he deployed the ambiguity of the predominant leftist attitude towards class difference. He claims that all progressive guys want poverty to disappear, classes to disappear, but they don't mean it. It's a very perceptible observation. It holds for many so-called postmodern theorists today I claim. You do all the critical analysis and so on, but basically you do this just to make it sure that things will not really change. You know, it's like me, I’m saying this from my personal experience. If there ever was an obsessional neurotic, it's me. And I’m doing this, that a lot of academia functions like this today. You talk we are in deep crisis, panic and so on, but you talk just to make it sure that nothing will really change. How did I experience this? When I was just for a couple of months, I couldn't stand it, in psychoanalysis, I talked all the time, the minutes short Lacanian session that I was allotted, all the time. Why? Then I look deep into my heart. Because I was afraid that if I stop talking for a second, the analyst may ask me a really tough question. So you see the paradox. I was talking all the time to making it sure that nothing will change. And I think that this is how we are dealing today basically with ecology. So I will read a quote from Orwell, I will just replace poverty or class with global warming. Look now, the quote: "We all rail against global warming, but very few people seriously want to abolish it. So long as it is merely a question of ameliorating the lot of ordinary people, every decent person is agreed. But unfortunately, you get no further by merely wishing global warming away. More exactly, it is necessary to wish it away, but your wish has no efficacy unless you grasp what it involves. The fact that has got to be faced is that to abolish global warming means abolishing a part of yourself. Each of us will have to alter him herself so completely that at the end he, she, it will hardly be recognizable as the same person." And I take this very seriously, this statement. Namely, I had a certain although I was I’m fascist totalitarian privately, I like state order, total control, I was I was for obligatory vaccination. But I had a certain sympathy for those who opposed it, some American populist right-wingers, Agamben, because I think they got it... no, Agamben is not this although strangely he all... You know, it's so incredible how often today the apparent opponents speak the same language. I’m now finishing a new text of how we all make fun of Russia, but how Russian official Orthodox, Putin, Dugin and those guys ideology echoes the most fanatic American neo-Christian populism. Like, are you following what is going on now in Russia? Now officially, it's not one nut guy saying it, officially the goal is no longer denazification of Ukraine but desatanization. Patriarch Kirill, the, the boss of Orthodox Church, gave, gave an official claim a week ago title to Putin, "Chief Exorcist." And people are now talking of desatanization and so on that Ukraine is no longer a normal state but kind of satanic cult regime and that Western Europe is also becoming it and so on and so on. So I sympathized with those people who said but this type of control you cannot meet your fellows and so on, it definitely really affects imposes us to renounce some features how you socialize and so on which we did spontaneously perceive as part of being human. This was, this was real. So I think that's the difficult task ahead. We need more globalization, not less. We need global solidarity and cooperation more than ever. You remember, friends were sending me shots it was horrible. You remember last summer, a year and a half, two years ago in June, you remember there was a so-called heat dome in northwestern of the United States, southwest of Canada, Seattle, Vancouver. Temperatures almost degrees Celsius, which means at that point that part of United States Canada was warmer, warmer than Saudi Arabia, the Middle East and so on. But here I disagree with those who don't trust state authority and claim no, ecology movement it shouldn't be left to the state, it should be done from below, people fight locally and then only if necessary... No, sorry. If you look at measure them by ecological criteria, those parts northwestern of United States, southwest of Canada were not doing bad. They were in at the level of ecological measures pretty well. The problem is that this dome, heat dome, was the result of a global perturbation of how the air circulate in northern spheres of Arctic spheres of our planet. So this means that heat dome was a local phenomenon but it is the result of global disturbances, so we cannot it's meaningless to do it on the local level. The approach has to be global. Next point, and this is the really scary point. Science and technology today no longer aim only at understanding and reproducing natural processes. At the same time, we try to generate new forms of life that will surprise us. The goal is no longer just to dominate nature the way it is, but to generate something new, greater, stronger than ordinary nature, including ourselves. The dream that sustains the scientific technological endeavor is to trigger a process with no return. A process that would exponentially reproduce itself and go on on its own. The notion of "second nature," which is not just society reified in new nature, but literally new monstrous form of life, something like what happened in the past from time to time due to pathological contingency: deformed cows with two head heads, deformed trees and so on and so on. I think that it is this horror that religion tries to domesticate today. That's why I agree with some Lacanians who claim that far from religion being threatened by new technological developments, religion is approaching its golden era. Why? Because it is this horror of new, as it were, artificial nature running out of control that religion tries to domesticate. This fear is also has its clear libidinal dimension. It is the fear of the asexual reproduction of life. The fear of an undead life that is indestructible, constantly expanding, reproducing itself through asexual self-division, multiplication. And the greatest master to exploit this fear is the Catholic Church. Its predominant strategy today is that of trying to contain the scientific real within the confines of meaning. A quote, I’m now in very on very bad terms with him but here he wrote something which I still conditionally agree with, I quote Jacques-Alain Miller: "Far from being effaced by science, religion is progressing every day. Lacan said that ecumenism was for the poor of spirit. There is a marvelous agreement on these questions between the secular and all the religious authorities in which they tell themselves that they should agree somewhere in order to make echoes equally marvelous... We see this because it is revealed that... Žižek skips/stumbles here ...religion is planted in the position of unconditional defense of the living, of life in mankind as guardian of life, making life absolute. And that extends to the protection of human nature. This is what gives a future to religion through meaning, namely by erecting barriers to cloning, to the exploitation of human cells, and to inscribe science into a temperate progress. We see a marvelous effort, a new youthful vigor of religion in its effort to flood the real with meaning." End of quote. So allow me just to finish. The church’s message of hope does rely on a pre-existing fear. It evokes and formulates the fear against which it then offers a solution of hope and faith. The life that it promises in its defense of the culture of life is reactive life, a defense against death. And no wonder that the predominant version of ecology is the ecology of fear. Fear that pushes us to plan measures that would protect our safety. How then? What to do here? Because this is, admit it even if you are not religious, this is our common reaction. Horrible things potentially are the result of science, our intervention and no one wants to renounce science, but how to retain it within the confines of meaning. Meaning in the sense of global organic totality of humanity, its progress and so on and so on. To really conclude, believe it or not, I will now finish with something already mentioned in some of my books. I think that the only rational, if we are still capable of rational thinking, solution is the opposite one. And it's not a utopia, it is already happening. To resuscitate what Alain Badiou, with whom I disagree but here I still agree with him, called the eternal idea of revolutionary justice. What is demanded, the four components of Badiou's notion of justice, are: First, strict egalitarianism, egalitarian justice. All of us who deal with ecology agree with this. All people should pay ideally the same price in eventual renunciations. One should impose the same worldwide norms per capita of energy consumption and so on and so on. So, justice. Then, terror. Absolutely, I’m for terror of course, in the sense of ruthless punishment of all those who violate the imposed protective measures and so on and so on. You will say I’m dreaming here. No, I’m not. The first step towards terror as I gladly observed, you cannot have terror without whistleblowers. And I find an extreme ethical progress in the fact that in the last years whistleblowers were elevated into new heroes. Are we aware that we are talking here about something that historically was associated with terror? Third thing, voluntarism. We should drop this standard Marxist reliance on history is on our side. No, as again Walter Benjamin put it, history is not on our side. If we let history go on the way it is, we are just approaching some form of collective suicide. Again as Benjamin said, today the task of a revolution is not to help the historical tendency but to stop the train of history which runs towards a precipice. So again, it's voluntarism in the good sense that we cannot rely even, I think we should even renounce any subject now that nobody trusts the so-called old-fashioned working class. We are all and this goes on from the 60s in search of an ersatz, additional subject of emancipation, you know. It can be, it can be I don't know, third world traditional culture like as the fashionable people say a possible site of resistance towards global capitalism. I totally disagree. I think that global capitalism always liked aboriginal local cultures to survive. I mean just look at India where the moment British imperialists took over India their first idea was to strengthen Hindu religion. They reprinted all books. What they feared were Indians who would try to imitate them too much, becoming adept to technology... No, no, no. Every British imperialist was always ready to say: "My god, we are so vulgar in the West, an, an, a modest Indian farmer has more wisdom than all our vulgar Western civilization" and so on and so on. So it's voluntarism. And last but not least, what is traditionally called trust, trust in the people. Like yes terror but genuine popular terror. Ordinary people denounce those in power. Now you will say I’m dreaming. No, I’m not. You know who wrote a wonderful text? I don't fully agree with him but Joseph Stiglitz, the economist. He wrote, I don't know where I read it in some Project Syndicate marginal site for comments. He had a simple insight. He says that now that we are caught in a war, Europe is approaching a war for Ukraine, and also other global conflicts, we still act as if we can at the same time play the war, support Ukraine, but somehow keep safe our peaceful way of life. It can’t be done. He said you cannot win a war, even the war against ecology with all normal civil market economy going on. We will have... don’t be afraid, I’m not a militarist although I’m also not a peacenik, for peace. You know why not? The first problematic thing is that just think about it. I think that whenever you have a situation of occupation, occupiers are always sincerely for peace. Of course today in Palestine, Israel is totally for peace on the West Bank because peace means we have it. So it’s for me very problematic this situation of peace. Now you will say, but now we are maybe approaching a situation of a deadlock of front in Ukraine, maybe it's time to put pressure on Ukraine to accept peace. Maybe. But my counterpoint is but are you aware that we are in this situation because we supported militarily Ukraine? Without Western support of Ukraine, Ukraine would have been long occupied and so on and so on. So the, the stance I cannot now advocate concrete measures. It's A: Voluntarism without any guarantee in the big other. We don't have any higher necessity, natural order or whatever to rely on. We will be obliged to make to make tremendous risks. And the only way to avoid the trap to avoid the catastrophe is to is to withdraw from this totally annihil... totally renounce this pseudo-ecological I claim because it mystifies nature, idea of a deeper meaning in nature, of a deeper meaning of phenomena. Yes, there will be catastrophes, but the worst thing possible is to read these catastrophes as signs of a deeper meaning. And it's very difficult to resist this push towards meaning. The story that I often repeat maybe you know it, even in Israel I met some of them, a sect not even so small, hundred of thousands, which claims that the Jews because they were too decadent in Western Europe before Hitler, they deserved Holocaust. They were guilty, that's the meaning of Holocaust. I find this terrifying. This projection of meaning which makes things easier. So I advocate again, much stronger global cooperation. Isn't it absolute? Just think even independently of for what is ahead. Because of changing weather patterns and global warming, there will be much more immigrants, poverty and so on. Things like this did already happen in the past. But they were usually resolved in a violent way. One nation moved occupied another's and the stronger guy won and so on and so on. We cannot because of nuclear weapons and other things, we cannot afford a thing like this. So I think, and this is why I provocatively like to define myself as still a Communist, not in the sense of the Central Committee decides. No, if anything the 19th century, 20th century Communism was ecologically worse than liberal democracy. But I claim that if there will not be some kind of not abolishment of the market but let's say socialization of economy, in the sense of we will have to make decisions what to produce, how to coordinate, which cannot be left to the market. If we don't take this path, then we are lost. Thanks very much, I’m sorry if I was too long. [Audience Applause] There is in fact time for a Q&A. We have a microphone here. Alonso will bring it to you. We have like another minutes before we have to leave the room. So maybe keep it compact. I try to keep a list. I think the person in the blue sweater first. Cheers, good to see you again since Birkbeck. About the end of nature: Have civilization and technology disrupted the biological process of natural selection? With Hegel, therefore, are there rational principles organizing history? Could the Freudian pleasure principle be one of them, if not the most dominant of them all? Ah, that's a nice, I like this question. Like, no bullshitting. I was afraid that this your question will be followed by minutes of your own thoughts on it. Thanks very much. I would say I read a book on this and it convinced me. It's that you know that through its intelligence, even modest technologies and so on, in some sense humanity itself disturbed the process of natural selection. In the sense that we violate if we may call it truly natural selection and so on. On the other hand, let's not mystify again natural selection as something authentic, the, the truly more capable strong guy survive. All good from Stephen Jay Gould on, or good evolutionary biologists, make it clear that it's not a question of the best guy wins. It's totally contingent. The best guy is on the top, then some small thing like some natural disaster changes the environment and the previous guy is on the top and so on. So again, first don't mystify, I’m not saying you did it, but my aversion, don't mystify natural selection into some kind of an authentic process where true qualities emerge. And second thing: Be aware that with humans it's also a process of struggle for survival, blah blah, but it functions the moment you have historical memory and so on, it functions in a different way. Cultural selection is not just as some vulgar evolutionary guys think, the, the prolongation of natural selection. It's something totally different. And I like in some my books I wrote about it, this idea of how a certain, let's call it sexual aesthetic concern was from the beginning even in those so-called most primitive societies an element of survival. For example, there are now I like to read them although I cannot judge how appropriate their theories are, the idea is that you know we all admire but at the same time think how stupid they are those if you find them primitive Stone Age hammers with just wood and on it a big stone fixed and so on. And the idea is that all this the function was not efficiency. It was just this external spectacle show of a... how do you call the stupid animals who has this big mega-feathers? Peacock? Peacocks, yes. You know what's the big problem with peacocks? You have these gigantic feathers. In what sense does this help you in your survival? It makes you much more clumsy and so on and so on. So the theory is that the message is precisely this one, a similar one like why should all presents to your beloved in principle be useless? You don't give to your, sorry for my sexist perspective, if you like a girl you don't give her socks or underwear. You give her, I ring, gold and so on, which is precisely totally useless. And the idea is that it's something similar in the case of a peacock. It's: You see I’m so strong that I can carry on my back all this mega-shit and I still survive. So I like this idea that there is a certain as it were very primitive aesthetic logic at work there. Also, I like the theory of some serious evolutionary theorists that language, even Daniel Dennett says at some point this, that language was not invented to tell the truth. Like our language is not the prolongation of that stupid beast language, you know. You make this movement, it means there are a lot of flowers down there. No. Language is originally an instrument to lie. That from the very beginning. So again, I think it's a very complex question what you said, we have to clarify the terms more. Okay, in the front? Thank you so much for this talk, it was fascinating. When you begin like this, I see you sharpening your knife behind your back. Go to that point directly. Oh my god. Okay. Am I a communist or a filthy liberal? You say yes and wave a knife at me. Oh my god. The death, okay. Okay, I have a Latin American background so maybe this question comes from there. There is this debate between conservatives and liberals, just to put it simple, on gender and taking it back to the introduction you made. Where conservatives accuse liberals to spread an ideology of gender, and the liberals' thinkers reject that as a false accusation saying that ideology of gender doesn't exist. But I heard that in your introduction you actually used some of those phrases. So in what sense a gender ideology is an ideology, and why do you call it like that, and how do you explain this rhetoric used between liberals and conservatives rejecting... First let me make my position clear and say something: Ideology in our intellectual struggles, I think that this general culture war between postmodern liberals and traditionalists is a false war. In... okay but I don't want to get lost. Okay to your precise question. Ideology: first I have developed repeatedly in my books, I think that trans people experience I’m still for sexual difference, but I don’t conceive it as this fixed binary difference between masculine, feminine and so on, but as a certain deadlock, trouble, I take the expression "gender trouble" maybe more seriously than Judith Butler, inscribed into the very basic constitutive structure of human sexuality. And often I’m thinking what you know, as an old Hegelian, when you have this opposition, traditional conservatives attacking ideology of gender and gender attacking the opposite side as again binary patriarchal ideology and so on, I think that they both share something. Insofar as, how do you call the opposite side? the trans LGBT whatever, all I oppose them only insofar as they share a feature which is what: for conservatives you have something like, it even doesn't have to be fully natural, but a certain traditional form, patriarchal family, sexual difference and so on, which is the standard, and then they read what goes on today as the result of this as the result of the gradual disintegration of these standards, with the obvious idea, let's return to to the past. Of course this is ideology if there ever was one. And I use here the term ideology let's not go into what it really means in a very commonsensical way. A: it's factually wrong and B: it serves certain interests of those in power, men, blah blah, whatever you want. But where do I disagree with some version of LGBT+ feminists? I already basically said it. For me they enter ideology the moment they presume that in itself sexuality is some polymorphously perverse fluid state, you freely choose your identity and so on, and then from outside due to social domination, this as it were free flow is is controlled, disciplined by binary patriarchal logic. I think that the shit, the trouble, is already in human sexuality as such. And I will give you an example I used it, I’m so sorry, in my last book which is my favorite. A columnist in The Guardian magazine, Eve Wiseman, wrote some two years ago an article where she is horrified at something which she considers totally terrifying, our today's decadence and so on. It is, I’m sorry if some of you know the story, she was watching, and I like watching them, don’t I’m not a crazy guy who watches hardcore movies. I think they usually depress me so much that I think if you are an infomaniac or sexual perverse, the way to cure you is to make you watch these movies for hours every day if you don't get totally impotent and frigid. But she noticed something. They are very interesting movies about making a hardcore movie, where you see the whole scene, you know. The couple or whoever doing it and then behind the camera talk. Okay and in the movie, I only rely on this lady's, on this woman's report, I didn't see it, but the way she describes it, it's traditional. On a bed, a guy is, sorry I want to cut it short, screwing a lady, and in the middle of it he stops, steps back, and says: "My god, I’m sorry, I’m losing erection. Please, give me my iPhone so that I go quickly to Pornhub." But you know the crazy paradox of this. What do you want? You have the real woman there, and as if that's not enough, you need Pornhub, you need the image to do it. But that's I think the structure of sexuality. You always need a fiction, a fantasy support. You know. This is the fundamental gap in sexuality. That's why Freud's point is not: whatever we are saying we are secretly thinking about sex. No, it's: what we are thinking when we do make love, when we have sex. And it can be very strange things. For example, you know Ludwig Wittgenstein, the great philosopher? He was a little bit crazy so when he was serving the Austrian army, he was regularly in the First World War, he was regularly masturbating. And he wrote in his diaries, they were discovered recently and published by a friend of mine in Vienna, what his dreams were while he was masturbating. It was not screwing a man or a woman or whatever, it was debating with philosophers abstract questions. And there is a truth in it. You don't have zero level healthy normal sexuality is just my body, another's body. No. The structure is originally this gap. You have some nonsensical stupid real and it's all, you are always courting the danger that you appear, that you experience this brutal reality in all its stupidity. Look in a non-sexual way at sexual act. Can you imagine anything more stupid? Pure stupidity. So you need fantasy support. And that's why now I will do something very nasty, referring a little bit to myself, but maybe some of you... I’m here too reflexive, often it happened to me, sorry to be so open but it's not too embarrassing. In the middle of sexual act, when I was still young and doing it, I, I as it were fell out of it, you know, like I observed myself from, "What am I doing here, my god?" you know. "Isn't this too stupid?" And
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there fantasy has to enter. And you know, you need a fantasy but then fantasy can disintegrate and so on, fantasy can disintegrate and so on and so on. You know. And again, I think that what I like potentially all this LGBT stuff and so on is extremely profound
there fantasy has to enter. And you know, you need a fantasy but then fantasy can disintegrate and so on, fantasy can disintegrate and so on and so on. You know. And again, I think that what I like potentially all this LGBT stuff and so on is extremely profound
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by making clear how what a terrible deadlock sexuality is. But it becomes ideology when it falls into the trap of claiming that there is some zero level, even if they would not admit it, zero level healthy sex, only secondarily disturbed by social oppression and so on and so on. I mean sex is such a mess in what sense? You know, there is oppression of certain way of enjoyment. But
by making clear how what a terrible deadlock sexuality is. But it becomes ideology when it falls into the trap of claiming that there is some zero level, even if they would not admit it, zero level healthy sex, only secondarily disturbed by social oppression and so on and so on. I mean sex is such a mess in what sense? You know, there is oppression of certain way of enjoyment. But
Slavoj Žižek
in sexuality it always gets turned around so that you all of a sudden start to enjoy oppression itself. That's the basic mechanism of obsessional neurotics. You are ashamed of some of your secret desires, and you adopt or construct rituals to fight them. But then you start to enjoy these very rituals and so on. As, now I will mention her in a positive way, as Judith Butler develops in one of her, a book of essays, which is much better than her other stuff, I think on "Something Desire" and so on, I forgot... *Psychic Life of Power*? No, no, a later one... where she develops how the basic mechanism of psychoanalysis is that a repression of desire necessarily turns into a desire for repression. You start to enjoy repression itself. And as she admits it here, she is a good Hegelian, there is no way to step back out of this mess and say: "Oh, now I’ve reached pure innocent pleasure" and so on. So I think this is the only thing I have problems with with some version of this LGBT stuff and so on. As if if we get rid of patriarchal binary structure, we will enjoy a full, full, plural, whatever unconstrained sex. No, we will not. The mess is constitutive. Sorry, I prefer not to go too far. Can we get one, it's not hypocritical but my, these were good questions, but quite often, and I’m not patronizing women, my god, I’m afraid of women. How should I not be afraid of women when in the last years all good books on Hegel were written by women? It started with Gillian Rose, even the early Judith Butler *Subjects of Desire*, then you have Rebecca Comay now, you have... so I am afraid of women. They are getting too bright. So what I’m saying is that I’m saying out of this sincere concern, can't we get some questions even if they are aggressive from women so that men will not...? Yes. The woman to the front, please. Please. Don't be shy. Um, I’m not a woman. Um... and even another thing, reference to you, I’m changing the topic. When you said I’m so sad I wasn't able to go into it. You know why? Because I just finished a book, all of this what I have to say about universality and so on is already in my books. But my favorite example, that's why I don't like Nation of Islam style black identity politics, for me the true hero is his universal thinker, Malcolm X. He is a Hegelian genius, as I developed a couple of times. Why? You know what's his big trick? He assumes X. X stands for: we were torn out of our African natural roots, we don't have identity. But his conclusion is not that roots bullshit, you know now we should now return search our roots. No, is that this gives us, blacks, a chance to become more free universal than white people. He asks a much more radical universality. He is for me, again, one of the true authentic, that's why he was killed. Because the, he was killed probably, it's not clear, by the Nation of Islam guys, you know, who were precisely black identity
in sexuality it always gets turned around so that you all of a sudden start to enjoy oppression itself. That's the basic mechanism of obsessional neurotics. You are ashamed of some of your secret desires, and you adopt or construct rituals to fight them. But then you start to enjoy these very rituals and so on. As, now I will mention her in a positive way, as Judith Butler develops in one of her, a book of essays, which is much better than her other stuff, I think on "Something Desire" and so on, I forgot... *Psychic Life of Power*? No, no, a later one... where she develops how the basic mechanism of psychoanalysis is that a repression of desire necessarily turns into a desire for repression. You start to enjoy repression itself. And as she admits it here, she is a good Hegelian, there is no way to step back out of this mess and say: "Oh, now I’ve reached pure innocent pleasure" and so on. So I think this is the only thing I have problems with with some version of this LGBT stuff and so on. As if if we get rid of patriarchal binary structure, we will enjoy a full, full, plural, whatever unconstrained sex. No, we will not. The mess is constitutive. Sorry, I prefer not to go too far. Can we get one, it's not hypocritical but my, these were good questions, but quite often, and I’m not patronizing women, my god, I’m afraid of women. How should I not be afraid of women when in the last years all good books on Hegel were written by women? It started with Gillian Rose, even the early Judith Butler *Subjects of Desire*, then you have Rebecca Comay now, you have... so I am afraid of women. They are getting too bright. So what I’m saying is that I’m saying out of this sincere concern, can't we get some questions even if they are aggressive from women so that men will not...? Yes. The woman to the front, please. Please. Don't be shy. Um, I’m not a woman. Um... and even another thing, reference to you, I’m changing the topic. When you said I’m so sad I wasn't able to go into it. You know why? Because I just finished a book, all of this what I have to say about universality and so on is already in my books. But my favorite example, that's why I don't like Nation of Islam style black identity politics, for me the true hero is his universal thinker, Malcolm X. He is a Hegelian genius, as I developed a couple of times. Why? You know what's his big trick? He assumes X. X stands for: we were torn out of our African natural roots, we don't have identity. But his conclusion is not that roots bullshit, you know now we should now return search our roots. No, is that this gives us, blacks, a chance to become more free universal than white people. He asks a much more radical universality. He is for me, again, one of the true authentic, that's why he was killed. Because the, he was killed probably, it's not clear, by the Nation of Islam guys, you know, who were precisely black identity
unknown
politicians and they, no wonder
politicians and they, no wonder
Slavoj Žižek
some of them, black identity politicians have like Louis Farrakhan is politically more on the right side and so on, you know. They fit perfectly with with white fundamentalists and so on. All the the white fundamentalists' line is, "Identity politics, wonderful thing. We just want also our own identity to be," you know. So the way to fight racism is precisely not to accept a particular identity as justifying anything. That's why I agree here with Gilles Deleuze, who said that any politics which has to
some of them, black identity politicians have like Louis Farrakhan is politically more on the right side and so on, you know. They fit perfectly with with white fundamentalists and so on. All the the white fundamentalists' line is, "Identity politics, wonderful thing. We just want also our own identity to be," you know. So the way to fight racism is precisely not to accept a particular identity as justifying anything. That's why I agree here with Gilles Deleuze, who said that any politics which has to
unknown
refer to a
refer to a
Slavoj Žižek
specific experience, you know like only a black single mother with AIDS can really know what means whatever... this is a catastrophe. All true emancipatory politics has to have this
specific experience, you know like only a black single mother with AIDS can really know what means whatever... this is a catastrophe. All true emancipatory politics has to have this
unknown
universal dimension in it. It doesn't mean you renounce your particularity, but you somehow read your particularity, that's crucial, as a sign of what is wrong in our universality itself. That's why I wrote a short text recently, very short, supporting what goes on in Iran now. It's an incredible event. Women protesting for their, their rights, blah blah, you know the story. But they became the focus of it. In the sense that it's a wonderful event. Men somehow got the basic lesson that the only way to their freedom is to support women. Women are now the concrete universality there. You cannot be for freedom in Iran without supporting what women are doing now. Sorry, I got lost. The next one. Where is the woman who asks questions? Or the cis or trans or whatever you want? This hand there. Oh, Claudia Brodsky
universal dimension in it. It doesn't mean you renounce your particularity, but you somehow read your particularity, that's crucial, as a sign of what is wrong in our universality itself. That's why I wrote a short text recently, very short, supporting what goes on in Iran now. It's an incredible event. Women protesting for their, their rights, blah blah, you know the story. But they became the focus of it. In the sense that it's a wonderful event. Men somehow got the basic lesson that the only way to their freedom is to support women. Women are now the concrete universality there. You cannot be for freedom in Iran without supporting what women are doing now. Sorry, I got lost. The next one. Where is the woman who asks questions? Or the cis or trans or whatever you want? This hand there. Oh, Claudia Brodsky
Slavoj Žižek
has her first, Professor Brodsky. It's funny listening to you, you almost, you never referred to yourself so clearly as Hegelian. Like so Hegelian. Really? I thought I’d be... Oh yeah, there were lots of jokes, but good without, you know, without this thing that I want to... But you know that Hegel has many dirty jokes. They are just not quoted. Yes, they are very fun. Yeah yeah yeah. But I’m, I’m about to go teach a class that is on Hegel, right? And I’m thinking: oh this will be so easy now, I can just introduce Hegel via Žižek’s version of Hegel which is the Lacanian version of Hegel. So let me just ask you this: your version of Hegel, which is Hegel’s version of Hegel, the opposites are not only not opposite, but they in some way need each other, etc. etc. That's everything that you've said, and it makes perfect sense and I completely understand that, and like Hegel you would like a global state, and I completely understand that. Like... no, no, I know what you mean. I know what you mean. And like Hegel, yes, it would be great to have the mandatory vaccination etc. I mean, I... I’m not disputing that myself. This is not my, my mind right now. That's, that’s where Hegel is tending, and everyone says: "Oh, this is terrible, this is universal spirit, we have to kill it before it spreads." Okay. This is my question for you, because you've never really, as a Lacanian, you're never going to address this question, which I respect... Which question? The question of, you know, and what what to do with mediation? That is, Hegel has something that you never in some very important way to you, which I understand and again I respect, you never really introduce the, the estranging fact of mediation. Your perfect example of the indigenous cultures which are immediately made to as oh, look at these wonderful indigenous peoples doing their thing, the worst thing is when they become like us. So, yeah, but however we also have to make them into us because we need these people to serve us in a certain way that we can understand. So this is all true, right? And the fact that capital is constantly using this and exploiting this is all true, all of this is true. I couldn't agree more, right? My question is, Hegel has this other thing which is not a Lacanian principle at all called mediation, which doesn't mean, which for him is negation, right? Determinate negation. So it doesn't mean, it doesn't mean a happy medium. You understand? It doesn't mean what we're all doing here and it certainly doesn't mean well, I can choose to be whatever I want to do because I’m living in the happy medium or something like that, without constraints, without determinate negation or without what a while ago you called trauma. So I’m just going to ask you this because although I’ve heard you speak before, I’ve never felt like it was so clearly Hegelian without the thought of mediation. You see, as if the mediation would somehow contradict the problem of the opposites which simply eat each other, right? Simply reflect each other and need to consume each other. Ah, it was also nice to hear Stephen Jay Gould mentioned that the fact that it's pure chance or as or as Hegel would say, the animals they look at something they don't really reflect about its mystical being and its ontology, they eat it. You know, it's like... that's not their problem. You know, that's not nature's problem, right? Um, we import this being, this mystical divine being to objects, sensuous objects, animals they eat them. I mean, it's exactly what you're saying, but that's the but the animal's not mediating. And I’m not saying mediation is good, I have no op... it's kind of mine, right? I’m not offering an opinion. I’m just wondering since I’ll never have the opportunity probably again to ask you directly, "Und was von der Mitte," you know, what about mediation? That's all. I’m not saying good bad, "Oh you've missed it, liberal democracy, blah blah blah." I’m not doing any of that. I’m asking you if you’ve ever had like a, like a strong reflection on mediation. That's it. I think, okay, I didn't write a treatise on mediation. But I think that in some sense all the time I’m talking about it. I’ll give you a concrete example what I improvised in a confused tired way to your question. It's all about mediation. It's sex, even the most immediate one, me and my partner. It’s, it’s mediated through fantasy. Absolutely, absolutely. It's mediated through fantasy and that's also the Lacanian principle. But it's not in the way that Hegel I think is talking about. That’s all I can say. I know exactly what you mean. Oh, here I would... okay but... Yes, that's also liberal democracy and it functions really well, but, but that's not I think, personally I think that's one mine... I would have, okay but I don't think that's what he is talking about. I would love to go into this debate because you know what's I think Hegel's secret? It's not just that everything is mediated and so on and so on, is that every mediation has to finish in a new form of immediacy. For example, the state as the universal medium of social mediation has to have at its top the monarch, the king, or queen, Hegel doesn't go into this, who is something totally stupid, determined by nature, he doesn't have to have every, any qualities, but as such he is just a pure symbolic top. So here, here I, I disagree, maybe I can give one hint in the sense of what why I oppose what I call today predominant liberal Hegelians. And you can identify them immediately by one word: *Anerkennung*, mutual recognition. As if this is... no, Hegel is here much more tricky. I love him. No, no, but you know what I’m telling here? They have this liberal ideal of, you know, in a good society we all recognize each other. But you know which is for me the crucial, crucial Hegel's example of recognition? When he deals with death penalty. Hegel says, death penalty is the criminal's right. By condemning him to death, you recognize him as a responsible rational being. And all liberal Hegelians, I spoke with, who is that guy who translated now, apart from Pippin of course, the... not Brandom also, but the other guy, Pinkard, yes. They all have a problem if I tell them, but do you accept this also? Death penalty means true recognition of the... No, they want to have this ideal liberal notion of of recognition. You know with Hegel frankly I would have to know more because I think that I talk about mediation all the time. Mediation in the sense, I will now do something horrible, I know you know this joke, there is a boring joke that I literally repeated I think over times in my last books and in dozens of talks. This is for me mediation at its purest. You know, I’m so sorry to say it, but you know the joke from Ernst Lubitsch's *Ninotchka*, no? I go to a restaurant and say: "Can I get coffee but without cream, please?" And the waiter says: "Sorry, we don't have cream, we only have milk, so I can only give you coffee without milk." That's mediation because immediately coffee without cream, coffee without milk and plain coffee are materially the same. But if you include mediation they are not the same. Although materially plain coffee is the same as coffee without milk, but the logic of mediation means that *Bestimmte Negation* means that negation overdetermines the identity. Which is why I think, for example, feminism, authentic feminism arises when being a woman in an existing society is experienced as a specific negation, not just negation of being a traditional woman but negation of other potential... You know, feminism begins by somebody tells you, "You
has her first, Professor Brodsky. It's funny listening to you, you almost, you never referred to yourself so clearly as Hegelian. Like so Hegelian. Really? I thought I’d be... Oh yeah, there were lots of jokes, but good without, you know, without this thing that I want to... But you know that Hegel has many dirty jokes. They are just not quoted. Yes, they are very fun. Yeah yeah yeah. But I’m, I’m about to go teach a class that is on Hegel, right? And I’m thinking: oh this will be so easy now, I can just introduce Hegel via Žižek’s version of Hegel which is the Lacanian version of Hegel. So let me just ask you this: your version of Hegel, which is Hegel’s version of Hegel, the opposites are not only not opposite, but they in some way need each other, etc. etc. That's everything that you've said, and it makes perfect sense and I completely understand that, and like Hegel you would like a global state, and I completely understand that. Like... no, no, I know what you mean. I know what you mean. And like Hegel, yes, it would be great to have the mandatory vaccination etc. I mean, I... I’m not disputing that myself. This is not my, my mind right now. That's, that’s where Hegel is tending, and everyone says: "Oh, this is terrible, this is universal spirit, we have to kill it before it spreads." Okay. This is my question for you, because you've never really, as a Lacanian, you're never going to address this question, which I respect... Which question? The question of, you know, and what what to do with mediation? That is, Hegel has something that you never in some very important way to you, which I understand and again I respect, you never really introduce the, the estranging fact of mediation. Your perfect example of the indigenous cultures which are immediately made to as oh, look at these wonderful indigenous peoples doing their thing, the worst thing is when they become like us. So, yeah, but however we also have to make them into us because we need these people to serve us in a certain way that we can understand. So this is all true, right? And the fact that capital is constantly using this and exploiting this is all true, all of this is true. I couldn't agree more, right? My question is, Hegel has this other thing which is not a Lacanian principle at all called mediation, which doesn't mean, which for him is negation, right? Determinate negation. So it doesn't mean, it doesn't mean a happy medium. You understand? It doesn't mean what we're all doing here and it certainly doesn't mean well, I can choose to be whatever I want to do because I’m living in the happy medium or something like that, without constraints, without determinate negation or without what a while ago you called trauma. So I’m just going to ask you this because although I’ve heard you speak before, I’ve never felt like it was so clearly Hegelian without the thought of mediation. You see, as if the mediation would somehow contradict the problem of the opposites which simply eat each other, right? Simply reflect each other and need to consume each other. Ah, it was also nice to hear Stephen Jay Gould mentioned that the fact that it's pure chance or as or as Hegel would say, the animals they look at something they don't really reflect about its mystical being and its ontology, they eat it. You know, it's like... that's not their problem. You know, that's not nature's problem, right? Um, we import this being, this mystical divine being to objects, sensuous objects, animals they eat them. I mean, it's exactly what you're saying, but that's the but the animal's not mediating. And I’m not saying mediation is good, I have no op... it's kind of mine, right? I’m not offering an opinion. I’m just wondering since I’ll never have the opportunity probably again to ask you directly, "Und was von der Mitte," you know, what about mediation? That's all. I’m not saying good bad, "Oh you've missed it, liberal democracy, blah blah blah." I’m not doing any of that. I’m asking you if you’ve ever had like a, like a strong reflection on mediation. That's it. I think, okay, I didn't write a treatise on mediation. But I think that in some sense all the time I’m talking about it. I’ll give you a concrete example what I improvised in a confused tired way to your question. It's all about mediation. It's sex, even the most immediate one, me and my partner. It’s, it’s mediated through fantasy. Absolutely, absolutely. It's mediated through fantasy and that's also the Lacanian principle. But it's not in the way that Hegel I think is talking about. That’s all I can say. I know exactly what you mean. Oh, here I would... okay but... Yes, that's also liberal democracy and it functions really well, but, but that's not I think, personally I think that's one mine... I would have, okay but I don't think that's what he is talking about. I would love to go into this debate because you know what's I think Hegel's secret? It's not just that everything is mediated and so on and so on, is that every mediation has to finish in a new form of immediacy. For example, the state as the universal medium of social mediation has to have at its top the monarch, the king, or queen, Hegel doesn't go into this, who is something totally stupid, determined by nature, he doesn't have to have every, any qualities, but as such he is just a pure symbolic top. So here, here I, I disagree, maybe I can give one hint in the sense of what why I oppose what I call today predominant liberal Hegelians. And you can identify them immediately by one word: *Anerkennung*, mutual recognition. As if this is... no, Hegel is here much more tricky. I love him. No, no, but you know what I’m telling here? They have this liberal ideal of, you know, in a good society we all recognize each other. But you know which is for me the crucial, crucial Hegel's example of recognition? When he deals with death penalty. Hegel says, death penalty is the criminal's right. By condemning him to death, you recognize him as a responsible rational being. And all liberal Hegelians, I spoke with, who is that guy who translated now, apart from Pippin of course, the... not Brandom also, but the other guy, Pinkard, yes. They all have a problem if I tell them, but do you accept this also? Death penalty means true recognition of the... No, they want to have this ideal liberal notion of of recognition. You know with Hegel frankly I would have to know more because I think that I talk about mediation all the time. Mediation in the sense, I will now do something horrible, I know you know this joke, there is a boring joke that I literally repeated I think over times in my last books and in dozens of talks. This is for me mediation at its purest. You know, I’m so sorry to say it, but you know the joke from Ernst Lubitsch's *Ninotchka*, no? I go to a restaurant and say: "Can I get coffee but without cream, please?" And the waiter says: "Sorry, we don't have cream, we only have milk, so I can only give you coffee without milk." That's mediation because immediately coffee without cream, coffee without milk and plain coffee are materially the same. But if you include mediation they are not the same. Although materially plain coffee is the same as coffee without milk, but the logic of mediation means that *Bestimmte Negation* means that negation overdetermines the identity. Which is why I think, for example, feminism, authentic feminism arises when being a woman in an existing society is experienced as a specific negation, not just negation of being a traditional woman but negation of other potential... You know, feminism begins by somebody tells you, "You
Norman Finkelstein
are a woman, do your job, wash the dishes, whatever," and
are a woman, do your job, wash the dishes, whatever," and
Slavoj Žižek
you say, "No." In being a woman in this society, I am a woman without cream, which means without, deprived of creativity and so on and so on. So but what I like in Hegel is that we cannot simply oppose mediation and immediacy at its most radical for Hegel. Every immediacy is in some sense a retroactive effect of mediation. In the sense that you don't go, you don't go further in the sense of immediacy is getting mediated and so on and so on. You, Hegel's movement is I think more retroactive. You establish that what appeared as immediacy was always already mediated and so on and so on. So with... that's why I think that Hegel cannot be dismissed the way some philosophers of difference and so on try to get rid of him. That "yeah you have negation, mediation, but at the end the spirit or a big single object encapsulates all mediations." No, Hegel's view is I think much more, why not use the term, desperate, pessimist. For Hegel, reconciliation doesn't mean we are all friends. It means you reconcile with, accepts, you accept the very madness of the world. You don't try to encompass it. That's why, and this is what I like about Hegel, if people don't believe that Hegel is really a figure of mediation, incompletion, openness, look at his history of philosophy where in the introduction he says the crucial thing. He says all that philosophy can do is to describe the existing spiritual order, sociopolitical system, when it is already in its decay. Hegel says philosophy always comes too late, that's why philosophy absolutely cannot say anything about the future. Because, and this holds even against Marx I think, Hegel is fully aware that every image that we have of the future, no matter how utopian, is already mediated by our historical position. And Hegel is as Pippin noted, Hegel was not let's hope an idiot, which means that these lines from Introduction to Philosophy of Right obviously hold also for his system in Philosophy of Right. Hegel is not describing there the ideal soft fascist corporate system. He is describing a form which already was in decay in his time. Which is why, very important, Hegel's last text, a critique of this English Reform Bill which introduced more first step towards general vote. Hegel is horrified by it because he sees something that he cannot grasp, something totally new is emerging. So my paradox is that Hegel, far from being that idiot who had absolute knowledge in the sense "I know everything," Hegel is maybe the philosopher most open to future, much more than Marx. I think I advocate a Hegelian materialist critique of Marx. Yeah, sorry, I will get lost. But I appreciate your point,
you say, "No." In being a woman in this society, I am a woman without cream, which means without, deprived of creativity and so on and so on. So but what I like in Hegel is that we cannot simply oppose mediation and immediacy at its most radical for Hegel. Every immediacy is in some sense a retroactive effect of mediation. In the sense that you don't go, you don't go further in the sense of immediacy is getting mediated and so on and so on. You, Hegel's movement is I think more retroactive. You establish that what appeared as immediacy was always already mediated and so on and so on. So with... that's why I think that Hegel cannot be dismissed the way some philosophers of difference and so on try to get rid of him. That "yeah you have negation, mediation, but at the end the spirit or a big single object encapsulates all mediations." No, Hegel's view is I think much more, why not use the term, desperate, pessimist. For Hegel, reconciliation doesn't mean we are all friends. It means you reconcile with, accepts, you accept the very madness of the world. You don't try to encompass it. That's why, and this is what I like about Hegel, if people don't believe that Hegel is really a figure of mediation, incompletion, openness, look at his history of philosophy where in the introduction he says the crucial thing. He says all that philosophy can do is to describe the existing spiritual order, sociopolitical system, when it is already in its decay. Hegel says philosophy always comes too late, that's why philosophy absolutely cannot say anything about the future. Because, and this holds even against Marx I think, Hegel is fully aware that every image that we have of the future, no matter how utopian, is already mediated by our historical position. And Hegel is as Pippin noted, Hegel was not let's hope an idiot, which means that these lines from Introduction to Philosophy of Right obviously hold also for his system in Philosophy of Right. Hegel is not describing there the ideal soft fascist corporate system. He is describing a form which already was in decay in his time. Which is why, very important, Hegel's last text, a critique of this English Reform Bill which introduced more first step towards general vote. Hegel is horrified by it because he sees something that he cannot grasp, something totally new is emerging. So my paradox is that Hegel, far from being that idiot who had absolute knowledge in the sense "I know everything," Hegel is maybe the philosopher most open to future, much more than Marx. I think I advocate a Hegelian materialist critique of Marx. Yeah, sorry, I will get lost. But I appreciate your point,
Norman Finkelstein
but this would be a wonderful session, forget about this concrete
but this would be a wonderful session, forget about this concrete
unknown
problems and so on, but you know, to have a talk not about
problems and so on, but you know, to have a talk not about
Slavoj Žižek
nature, ecology, this actual problems but but about... Let me give a pre-Socratic twist to your question: the one, mediation and the
nature, ecology, this actual problems but but about... Let me give a pre-Socratic twist to your question: the one, mediation and the
unknown
absolute like. And then we have a big orgasmic colloquium with intellectual orgasms, just remaining at this level. Thanks very much. Where are we now temporarily? I think we're pretty much at the end. Unless you still have... You sound like the dots. This is the end, my friend. But I mean, if you still have energy and you want one more? Okay, one more, okay. Ah, there's another woman! Fine, so that we at least realize this Yin Yang balance, you know. How about we like, we collect the two questions together. Is that fine? Okay. Okay okay okay.
absolute like. And then we have a big orgasmic colloquium with intellectual orgasms, just remaining at this level. Thanks very much. Where are we now temporarily? I think we're pretty much at the end. Unless you still have... You sound like the dots. This is the end, my friend. But I mean, if you still have energy and you want one more? Okay, one more, okay. Ah, there's another woman! Fine, so that we at least realize this Yin Yang balance, you know. How about we like, we collect the two questions together. Is that fine? Okay. Okay okay okay.
unknown
Okay. Um, as for the first, if, if there is a relationship between modern sexual identity politics and the destruction of the environment which rests in a liberal secular idea of the autonomous self which is a legacy of the European Enlightenment, which is why, for example, the countries where the sexual revolution has happened are also the countries at the forefront of the environmental destruction, then does the pouring into Europe and Western countries of refugees who come from a culture which you in many places have described as being incompatible with modern Western values, especially when it comes to questions of gender and sexuality, does that offer a hope for the future? Insofar as those cultures who are bringing these other sexual mores may also be bringing ideas that are more better for the environment? I will give you a terrifying answer. Wait. Can we just...? It's a lady. I’m an idiot, I like to one after another. I, I think and for this I was claimed Eurocentrist, racist and so on. I think that the very conceptual apparatus which we use to criticize European Eurocentrism, imperialism is still profoundly embedded in European tradition of Enlightenment. And I think that what we... I think that, you know, that's why I know some people from there disagree with me. But I still think that the highest moment of Enlightenment and French Revolution is the Haiti revolution. Without Haiti black revolution, the French Revolution would have been a local effect. And I’m not a racist here. I’m not saying, "Oh, we Europeans had a great idea and then even the black slaves there copied it." No. They only they made again we are back at concrete universality, only through Haiti revolution the French Revolution, equality, fraternity became truly universal. They were in acts much and Hegel acknowledged this, it's very nice. They were the true universalist.
Okay. Um, as for the first, if, if there is a relationship between modern sexual identity politics and the destruction of the environment which rests in a liberal secular idea of the autonomous self which is a legacy of the European Enlightenment, which is why, for example, the countries where the sexual revolution has happened are also the countries at the forefront of the environmental destruction, then does the pouring into Europe and Western countries of refugees who come from a culture which you in many places have described as being incompatible with modern Western values, especially when it comes to questions of gender and sexuality, does that offer a hope for the future? Insofar as those cultures who are bringing these other sexual mores may also be bringing ideas that are more better for the environment? I will give you a terrifying answer. Wait. Can we just...? It's a lady. I’m an idiot, I like to one after another. I, I think and for this I was claimed Eurocentrist, racist and so on. I think that the very conceptual apparatus which we use to criticize European Eurocentrism, imperialism is still profoundly embedded in European tradition of Enlightenment. And I think that what we... I think that, you know, that's why I know some people from there disagree with me. But I still think that the highest moment of Enlightenment and French Revolution is the Haiti revolution. Without Haiti black revolution, the French Revolution would have been a local effect. And I’m not a racist here. I’m not saying, "Oh, we Europeans had a great idea and then even the black slaves there copied it." No. They only they made again we are back at concrete universality, only through Haiti revolution the French Revolution, equality, fraternity became truly universal. They were in acts much and Hegel acknowledged this, it's very nice. They were the true universalist.
Slavoj Žižek
And all the honor goes here to Jacobins who saw this. They immediately fully recognized New Haiti, in contrast to Napoleon who was a bad guy here, no? Napoleon sent the army there which a glorious moment which was defeated by, by the slaves.
And all the honor goes here to Jacobins who saw this. They immediately fully recognized New Haiti, in contrast to Napoleon who was a bad guy here, no? Napoleon sent the army there which a glorious moment which was defeated by, by the slaves.
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So what I’m saying is that I don't think that... here I had a disagreement with my otherwise good friend Alain Badiou, who first are you Spanish from Latin America? No, I’m from Pakistan.
So what I’m saying is that I don't think that... here I had a disagreement with my otherwise good friend Alain Badiou, who first are you Spanish from Latin America? No, I’m from Pakistan.
Slavoj Žižek
From? Oh, wonderful. I, I’m always, now I will hurt somebody else. I always prefer Pakistan to India. I think that Indians, at least the Hindu Indians, have a much more violent sense of identity and so on. But if you say that Pakistani youth have a political unconscious that pertains and tends to rape, I mean just like... Yeah. You said that, you know, Pakistani youth have a political unconscious that pertains to rape. I mean just like... Yeah... You know first I’m not, I’m not enough of an, I don't know enough to claim what is the political unconscious of the Pakistani youth and so on and so on. What I’m just saying is, and this will be much more problematic, it is that I don't I don't think that that the way to defeat European imperialism, racism and so on is that immigrants will bring some different op... and so on and so on. You end up there in something like, for example, because you know that this motive is now constantly repeated by Putin and Russian propaganda. "Our defense not attack in Ukraine is part of the global struggle against Western domination." But then you see which are the countries that support them. Afghanistan, Iran and so on and so on. Especially I find problematic the case of Afghanistan where as you probably know, when Taliban took over they immediately made a deal with China. Which was a very brutal pragmatic deal, which was: China will leave them alone to do their Islamist stuff, but Taliban promised: "You do all the anti-Muslim stuff with Uyghurs there and we don't care about that." And I’m definitely against this type of multiculturalism, which means I leave you your oppression, you leave me alone in in my oppression. I... so again, I whenever I think that the ultimate form of racism I always distrusted is a European, not you, a European discovering some depth which can help us in another more, what would be the political correct term for primitive? Okay pre-modern society. There is always a fantasy there. That's why I’m good friends with some native, you call them Native Americans, they hate the term. Because they claim, "Ah, we are Native Americans, so we are native what are you, cultural Americans? You are cultural," where they told me if they hate something it's this idea white people coming themselves: "Oh, we admire you, we are so decadent we destroy nature, you have holistic relationship to nature." They hate this so much. And I know a Native American guy, I love him, who wrote a book on, this is true fighting racism, who wrote a book on killing the buffaloes and claimed it's not the white, we Indians screwed it up, we killed more buffaloes than the white and so on and so on. It's crazy position but you know what's his point that the worst form of racism is this patronizing elevation of the other as more authentic and so on and so on. So in this sense, I don't think that that progress is with either we Europeans simply learning something from the third world, or I’m also against European racism like in the sense that they should adopt European Enlightenment, they will become civilized and so on and so on. It's more of a mess to put it like this. Sorry, let's have the lady. Hi, my question is if you are making a science fiction film, but interpret science fiction loosely because obviously the problems are not going to be solved with science alone, with like the most talented artists in the world, like what would be in that film in terms of like I don't know themes that people haven't explored enough or things that you haven't seen enough or like just anything you would want to see in it? Well, that movie I I can already have an answer, not that I made it but you know the novel, it's much more complex the story that I mentioned, this Liu Cixin or whatever, the I forgot the title, *Trisolaris*, *The Three-Body Problem*. Yeah yeah. You know something mysterious is happening with that movie. They made a mega production in China. I already saw trailers and so on. All of a sudden it disappeared. Okay in China things like this happen, you know. Then the rumor was that some big, not Netflix, some big Western company, Amazon even I think they wanted to move into it, bought for a tremendous amount half a billion of dollars bought the copyright. But this was three-four years ago again nothing happened. And maybe this is a good sign, you know, that there is something so traumatic in that novel that kind of there is resistance to it to do it. But to return to your question: I cannot give you I don't have a... I’m too stupid. My imagination is not good enough to give you a simple question. I just tell you that that genre which was alive a couple of years ago, I don't think it goes on. What was that movie, I forgot the title, not so well-known actors, I think a woman directed it, of a... it's this I like these simple science fiction movies not *Star Wars* whatever but just something small simple happens like what was
From? Oh, wonderful. I, I’m always, now I will hurt somebody else. I always prefer Pakistan to India. I think that Indians, at least the Hindu Indians, have a much more violent sense of identity and so on. But if you say that Pakistani youth have a political unconscious that pertains and tends to rape, I mean just like... Yeah. You said that, you know, Pakistani youth have a political unconscious that pertains to rape. I mean just like... Yeah... You know first I’m not, I’m not enough of an, I don't know enough to claim what is the political unconscious of the Pakistani youth and so on and so on. What I’m just saying is, and this will be much more problematic, it is that I don't I don't think that that the way to defeat European imperialism, racism and so on is that immigrants will bring some different op... and so on and so on. You end up there in something like, for example, because you know that this motive is now constantly repeated by Putin and Russian propaganda. "Our defense not attack in Ukraine is part of the global struggle against Western domination." But then you see which are the countries that support them. Afghanistan, Iran and so on and so on. Especially I find problematic the case of Afghanistan where as you probably know, when Taliban took over they immediately made a deal with China. Which was a very brutal pragmatic deal, which was: China will leave them alone to do their Islamist stuff, but Taliban promised: "You do all the anti-Muslim stuff with Uyghurs there and we don't care about that." And I’m definitely against this type of multiculturalism, which means I leave you your oppression, you leave me alone in in my oppression. I... so again, I whenever I think that the ultimate form of racism I always distrusted is a European, not you, a European discovering some depth which can help us in another more, what would be the political correct term for primitive? Okay pre-modern society. There is always a fantasy there. That's why I’m good friends with some native, you call them Native Americans, they hate the term. Because they claim, "Ah, we are Native Americans, so we are native what are you, cultural Americans? You are cultural," where they told me if they hate something it's this idea white people coming themselves: "Oh, we admire you, we are so decadent we destroy nature, you have holistic relationship to nature." They hate this so much. And I know a Native American guy, I love him, who wrote a book on, this is true fighting racism, who wrote a book on killing the buffaloes and claimed it's not the white, we Indians screwed it up, we killed more buffaloes than the white and so on and so on. It's crazy position but you know what's his point that the worst form of racism is this patronizing elevation of the other as more authentic and so on and so on. So in this sense, I don't think that that progress is with either we Europeans simply learning something from the third world, or I’m also against European racism like in the sense that they should adopt European Enlightenment, they will become civilized and so on and so on. It's more of a mess to put it like this. Sorry, let's have the lady. Hi, my question is if you are making a science fiction film, but interpret science fiction loosely because obviously the problems are not going to be solved with science alone, with like the most talented artists in the world, like what would be in that film in terms of like I don't know themes that people haven't explored enough or things that you haven't seen enough or like just anything you would want to see in it? Well, that movie I I can already have an answer, not that I made it but you know the novel, it's much more complex the story that I mentioned, this Liu Cixin or whatever, the I forgot the title, *Trisolaris*, *The Three-Body Problem*. Yeah yeah. You know something mysterious is happening with that movie. They made a mega production in China. I already saw trailers and so on. All of a sudden it disappeared. Okay in China things like this happen, you know. Then the rumor was that some big, not Netflix, some big Western company, Amazon even I think they wanted to move into it, bought for a tremendous amount half a billion of dollars bought the copyright. But this was three-four years ago again nothing happened. And maybe this is a good sign, you know, that there is something so traumatic in that novel that kind of there is resistance to it to do it. But to return to your question: I cannot give you I don't have a... I’m too stupid. My imagination is not good enough to give you a simple question. I just tell you that that genre which was alive a couple of years ago, I don't think it goes on. What was that movie, I forgot the title, not so well-known actors, I think a woman directed it, of a... it's this I like these simple science fiction movies not *Star Wars* whatever but just something small simple happens like what was
unknown
that one where you remember a ship lands somewhere...
that one where you remember a ship lands somewhere...
Slavoj Žižek
*Arrival*? Yeah *Arrival*, yes. It's so modest
*Arrival*? Yeah *Arrival*, yes. It's so modest
unknown
just and... it's a modest movie but I I loved it immensely, you know. I like these
just and... it's a modest movie but I I loved it immensely, you know. I like these
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apparently commercially B-level movies which are much more liberating in this sense, you know. But I don't even know what's happening. And yes, now to finish with something for which again you will hate me, it's politically maybe not even incorrect just in my circles it's fashionable to despise it. Although it's stupid simplified inconsistent but oh my god it's so horrible. I up to a point I enjoyed *Don't Worry Darling*, did you see it? Because I like this
apparently commercially B-level movies which are much more liberating in this sense, you know. But I don't even know what's happening. And yes, now to finish with something for which again you will hate me, it's politically maybe not even incorrect just in my circles it's fashionable to despise it. Although it's stupid simplified inconsistent but oh my god it's so horrible. I up to a point I enjoyed *Don't Worry Darling*, did you see it? Because I like this
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idea that the world we live in is sustained by a
idea that the world we live in is sustained by a
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dream which is literally true. The way the world
dream which is literally true. The way the world
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we live in is sustained
we live in is sustained
Slavoj Žižek
by an ideological dream, and you know that of course all my sexist friends accuse me "oh you want to screw Olivia Wilde so you sublimate this into into you like..." But no no there is another movie did you see it, *Prisoners*, I think? Some years old series which is based on anoth... blah where they have similar situation but with a wonderful detail. A guy again like here awakens in a very strange secluded universe, there is a city and life goes on, lives normal, but strange things happen. And then the solution is that they all live in a dream. There is a woman on Earth which has such strong dream ability and she with her constant dreaming sustains their world, sustained... But there is a wonderful detail, I like these details. All of a sudden in this universe it's again as in *Don't Worry Darling*, it's desert and so on, gaps appear. Like a big hole, all of a sudden part of the of the ground disappears, infinite hole. And the reading is that she has disturbed dream, you know, and it's experienced as... This is a very good metaphoric description I claim of our ideological of our ideological situation. So I must say, I like, I don't like not because no I’m not a snob they "oh space opera bad." No, they are simply more or less boring for me. And I even think my great disappointment in *Star Wars* is that the one that I was most looking forward to, what was that part where Anakin becomes Darth Vader? I all the time was intrigued into how they will stage this. They do it in a totally stupid wrong way because he is too much in love with Natalie Portman or whatever and so on and then this it's and then it becomes because like too attached to her so on... No, my... Okay now I will tell you a dream which comes to me. My, it’s madness. To reshoot *Star Wars* but from the opposite Stalinist way. Palpatine the Emperor and Darth Vader are good emancipatory universalist egalitarian dictators and they fight some old feudalist, those disgusting creatures like Yoda who wants to mess with it and so on, you know. To reshoot it by celebrating the Empire, you know. That would be my ideal of that one. That's why I also liked the *Game of Thrones*. I think the ending I was all the time on that how was she called, Daenerys, the girl dictator? I think she was a progressive dictator and at the end it's very sad. She is liquidated, and you remember it's I think consciously a sad ending, the new power circle gathers and they said, "Haha democracy, hoho what's this," and they they they decide the first two things is rebuild the army and the brothels and so on, you know. It's a very it’s not simply denouncing her as totalitarian and so on. I would if I were to make that series I would put a little bit more pressure on her being the good hardliner, you know. And there kind of a... it's like Thermidor, no? No no no I so I don't have big original idea, I just like to think in these terms you know how to change this how to change that. But my basic tendency as you can... Like I’m not a snob but through Sophie Fiennes I know Ralph Fiennes vaguely the actor. And he plays the bad guy Voldemort in *Harry Potter* movies. And I told him but the final movie where his gang the bad
by an ideological dream, and you know that of course all my sexist friends accuse me "oh you want to screw Olivia Wilde so you sublimate this into into you like..." But no no there is another movie did you see it, *Prisoners*, I think? Some years old series which is based on anoth... blah where they have similar situation but with a wonderful detail. A guy again like here awakens in a very strange secluded universe, there is a city and life goes on, lives normal, but strange things happen. And then the solution is that they all live in a dream. There is a woman on Earth which has such strong dream ability and she with her constant dreaming sustains their world, sustained... But there is a wonderful detail, I like these details. All of a sudden in this universe it's again as in *Don't Worry Darling*, it's desert and so on, gaps appear. Like a big hole, all of a sudden part of the of the ground disappears, infinite hole. And the reading is that she has disturbed dream, you know, and it's experienced as... This is a very good metaphoric description I claim of our ideological of our ideological situation. So I must say, I like, I don't like not because no I’m not a snob they "oh space opera bad." No, they are simply more or less boring for me. And I even think my great disappointment in *Star Wars* is that the one that I was most looking forward to, what was that part where Anakin becomes Darth Vader? I all the time was intrigued into how they will stage this. They do it in a totally stupid wrong way because he is too much in love with Natalie Portman or whatever and so on and then this it's and then it becomes because like too attached to her so on... No, my... Okay now I will tell you a dream which comes to me. My, it’s madness. To reshoot *Star Wars* but from the opposite Stalinist way. Palpatine the Emperor and Darth Vader are good emancipatory universalist egalitarian dictators and they fight some old feudalist, those disgusting creatures like Yoda who wants to mess with it and so on, you know. To reshoot it by celebrating the Empire, you know. That would be my ideal of that one. That's why I also liked the *Game of Thrones*. I think the ending I was all the time on that how was she called, Daenerys, the girl dictator? I think she was a progressive dictator and at the end it's very sad. She is liquidated, and you remember it's I think consciously a sad ending, the new power circle gathers and they said, "Haha democracy, hoho what's this," and they they they decide the first two things is rebuild the army and the brothels and so on, you know. It's a very it’s not simply denouncing her as totalitarian and so on. I would if I were to make that series I would put a little bit more pressure on her being the good hardliner, you know. And there kind of a... it's like Thermidor, no? No no no I so I don't have big original idea, I just like to think in these terms you know how to change this how to change that. But my basic tendency as you can... Like I’m not a snob but through Sophie Fiennes I know Ralph Fiennes vaguely the actor. And he plays the bad guy Voldemort in *Harry Potter* movies. And I told him but the final movie where his gang the bad
unknown
guys attack that stupid castle where they and they fail, and I said I would reshoot it. He Voldemort is a good progressive people’s leader and they
guys attack that stupid castle where they and they fail, and I said I would reshoot it. He Voldemort is a good progressive people’s leader and they
Slavoj Žižek
attack that magician's castle as the ruling class university and so on you know. It didn't go well with him. Because I gave to him another idea, you know he now is M in James Bond, no? And I said I hope so much that it will turn out that you are really a bad guy like maybe Blofeld's illegitimate son or whatever that M... and he he said, "No I’m tired of these roles of a pathological bad guys I want to be finally a good guy." And I didn't tell him but my idea was "haha so you want to be like an just another boring good guy" you know. That's what awaits you, no? So again along this lines I like to see the ambiguities and to I’m for a long time obsessed, I love this, with this idea of take a classical work of art and rewrite it with a different ending. For example, unfortunately there are not many opera lovers here properly. But do you know Puccini's *Tosca*? Where at the end, you know, she thought that she bribed and up before killing him that Cavaradossi... not Cavardossi, yes, and then she said oh, oh, oh he is shot, he thinks oh he survived and then he notice she noticed with horror he her lover is really dead so she jumps down. Alain Badiou gave me and musically it could be done, there are long enough passages this change. If you know the ending like she lies dead and she oh Mario, Mario and runs and jumps down that she jumps towards the precipice that Angel Castle to jump down and then he moves he says "no no Tosca I was just kidding I’m really alive" and then embrace and you can use the same triumphant music which would have fitted even better you know. That's the limit of my creativity. I don't have strong enough enjoyment sorry creative imagination you know to invent the whole the entire new story. But on the other hand I’m unfortunately my maybe I’m really a secret totalitarian or what I like this northern dark myth you know Nibelung, Beowulf and so on. I don't like this Mediterranean too bright. I like the idea of everything ends bad it's a nightmare and so on, you know. I’m a pessimist you know why? Because the final moral lecture to you: we pessimists are really the only people who can be moderately happy because you are a total pessimist and then fuck it from time to time something happens which is not too bad you get... Well if you are an optimist you are basically all the time disappointed I think you know. So I’m a pessimist believing in miracles, not supernatural miracles but for example look now at Iran and so on and so on. Miracles happen, miracles only in this sense of political of political miracles, no? Thanks very much I’m sorry. [Audience Applause]
attack that magician's castle as the ruling class university and so on you know. It didn't go well with him. Because I gave to him another idea, you know he now is M in James Bond, no? And I said I hope so much that it will turn out that you are really a bad guy like maybe Blofeld's illegitimate son or whatever that M... and he he said, "No I’m tired of these roles of a pathological bad guys I want to be finally a good guy." And I didn't tell him but my idea was "haha so you want to be like an just another boring good guy" you know. That's what awaits you, no? So again along this lines I like to see the ambiguities and to I’m for a long time obsessed, I love this, with this idea of take a classical work of art and rewrite it with a different ending. For example, unfortunately there are not many opera lovers here properly. But do you know Puccini's *Tosca*? Where at the end, you know, she thought that she bribed and up before killing him that Cavaradossi... not Cavardossi, yes, and then she said oh, oh, oh he is shot, he thinks oh he survived and then he notice she noticed with horror he her lover is really dead so she jumps down. Alain Badiou gave me and musically it could be done, there are long enough passages this change. If you know the ending like she lies dead and she oh Mario, Mario and runs and jumps down that she jumps towards the precipice that Angel Castle to jump down and then he moves he says "no no Tosca I was just kidding I’m really alive" and then embrace and you can use the same triumphant music which would have fitted even better you know. That's the limit of my creativity. I don't have strong enough enjoyment sorry creative imagination you know to invent the whole the entire new story. But on the other hand I’m unfortunately my maybe I’m really a secret totalitarian or what I like this northern dark myth you know Nibelung, Beowulf and so on. I don't like this Mediterranean too bright. I like the idea of everything ends bad it's a nightmare and so on, you know. I’m a pessimist you know why? Because the final moral lecture to you: we pessimists are really the only people who can be moderately happy because you are a total pessimist and then fuck it from time to time something happens which is not too bad you get... Well if you are an optimist you are basically all the time disappointed I think you know. So I’m a pessimist believing in miracles, not supernatural miracles but for example look now at Iran and so on and so on. Miracles happen, miracles only in this sense of political of political miracles, no? Thanks very much I’m sorry. [Audience Applause]