Slavoj Žižek: Wokeness, Psychoanalysis, and Quantum Mechanics | Robinson's Podcast #109
Interview · Robinson Erhardt ·
published 2023-07-02 · 1:36:25 · 10,839 words
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psychoanalysisideologysexuality-genderhegel-dialecticsscience-physicsfascism-populismliberalism-political-correctnesscinema-art-culturephilosophy-generalgeopolitics-warrace-antisemitismethicssubjectivityreligion-theology
Žižek argues that psychoanalysis is needed today not just as personal therapy but as societal critique, especially to understand how permissiveness turns into its opposite (prohibition). He critiques political correctness and 'woke' culture for producing new forms of oppression, discusses the false opposition between biological determinism and trans ideology, and defends a materialist reading of quantum physics informed by Hegel's ontology of contingency and incompleteness. The conversation ranges over love as violence, antisemitism's structural logic, unholy political alliances, and the need for large-scale left solidarity.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 24
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
A world where you can consensually crush testicles but cannot call someone a wrong name without being suspended.
The core thesis: official permissiveness produces its own version of even worse oppression and regulation.
as “prohibition of desire turning into desire for prohibition”
Classic psychoanalytic mechanism: prohibition turns into its own object of enjoyment (obsessional symptoms).
The formula 'je sais bien, mais quand même', I know very well but nonetheless I still act as if.
Following Sloterdijk: no longer 'I don't know what I'm doing' but 'I know what I'm doing is horrible, but so what, I still do it.'
The duty of theorists is to hurt people; truth is painful, and freedom of speech means being able to tell people what they don't want to hear.
as “Lacanian symbolic identity”
Lacan's point that a biological woman can symbolically have a masculine identity and vice versa, with possibilities of third transpositions.
Love is an extremely violent thing that disturbs everyday welfare; this kind of violence is necessary and life-affirming.
as “big Other”
Implicit in the discussion of how symbolic order changes what counts as pathology (e.g. fidelity becoming pathological).
The social-symbolic framework that determines what counts as normal vs. pathological, which can shift historically (e.g. fidelity becoming pathological).
Totally ironic term: means its exact opposite, associations are not free but determined by unconscious prejudices.
as “unconscious”
Not a deep inner truth (contra Jung) but a domain of dirty inconsistent fantasies, desires, and fundamental lies.
Our subjectivity is split; we often think we want one thing but really desire another; desire is perverted and self-contradictory.
A more radical materialism that requires redefining reality in light of quantum physics, where the wave function demands a new ontology.
as “antagonism”
Society is not a harmonious body disrupted by an external intruder; antagonism (class struggle) is internal to society itself.
Hitler's rhetorical trick: providing both a conspiracy (complot) and a consistent narrative (plot) that makes sense of social crisis.
Political coalitions of positions that should be incompatible but are brought together, e.g. anti-colonialism justifying homophobia, or anti-imperialism aligning with Putin.
Hegel's metaphor: philosophy grasps an epoch only when its time is running out; philosophy cannot speculate about the future.
For Hegel, teleology doesn't predetermine development; once a thing happens, it retroactively creates a narrative of its own necessity.
as “neo-feudalism”
Following Varoufakis/Dean: liberal global capitalism is being replaced by a neo-feudalism where oligarchs like Bezos collectivize our commons and we pay rent.
as “ontological openness”
Reality is not completely programmed; it is ontologically incomplete, analogous to video games where distant objects are not fully rendered.
as “God caught with his pants down”
Theological joke: God didn't program quantum details because he thought we'd never reach that level, but we did, catching him incomplete.
Bohr's injunction against asking about the nature of reality in quantum physics, Žižek sees this as avoiding the real philosophical question.
Not explicitly named but the logic of enjoying prohibition itself is discussed throughout.
Stories he reaches for 7
Lacan's example: a pathologically jealous husband is still pathological even if his wife is really sleeping with other men, the point is the structure of his jealousy, not the factual truth. Analogous to antisemitism: the factual question is not the core.
“even if my wife is really sleeping with other men, my jealousy is pathological”
Kurosawa made a Hamlet adaptation set in Japan with Toshiro Mifune, illustrating that works of art can refer across cultures and we may understand Shakespeare better than he understood himself.
“for me, the best film version of Hamlet is Kurosawa's, wonderful title he gave: 'Only Bad People Can Sleep Well'”
The Glasgow climate conference stated all the correct principles about radical social change needed for global warming, but in a way that ensured nothing would follow, illustrating cynical reason.
“they were saying all the right things in principle, but it was already said in a way which included that nothing will follow”
Uganda's parliament voted for the death penalty for homosexuality, justified as resistance to 'European decadent imperialist colonizing way of life', an unholy alliance of anti-colonialism and extreme homophobia.
“they said: you have the choice, European decadent imperialist colonizing way of life or our authentic African way of life”
Freud visited the terrifying Škocjan Caves in Slovenia and, in the deepest depth, encountered the anti-Semitic politician Karl Lueger, whose name 'Lüge' means 'lie' in German, symbolizing that the unconscious contains fundamental lies, not deep truths.
“he met the fundamental lie there”
When told that many Jews are nice people, a true anti-Semite responds that this makes them even more dangerous because 'the essence of Jews is they know how to mask their evil with superficial kindness', showing how factual refutation strengthens racist logic.
“the essence of the Jews is that they're not only what they are, greedy evil, but they know how to mask their evil with superficial kindness”
Venice and Kassel art biennales declare anti-capitalist, anti-colonial themes but fit perfectly into modern capitalism, stating the truth while rendering it ineffective.
“precisely as such, this art biennales fit perfectly modern capitalism”
Works invoked 10
Philosophy of Right book
Cited for the Owl of Minerva metaphor and Hegel's prohibition on speculating about the future.
Antigone play
Žižek wrote his own version/rewriting of Antigone; a Slovene director staged it in Munich, leading to the pronoun anecdote.
The Bad Sleep Well film
Kurosawa's Hamlet adaptation; called by Žižek the best film version of Hamlet.
Hamlet play
Used as example of ontological openness, its meaning is immanently open and antagonistic.
The Auschwitz survivor vs reality TV survivor episode is used to illustrate how comedy preserves the incomparability of Auschwitz.
Naming and Necessity book
Described as one of the formative books of Žižek's youth.
Moral Luck book
Praised for deep insight into temporality and retroactive moral judgment.
Documenta (Kassel) other
Criticized alongside Venice Biennale for anti-capitalist rhetoric that renders truth ineffective.
Cited for Hegel's empirically correct prediction that the 20th century would belong to Russia and America.
Venice Biennale other
Criticized for denouncing capitalism while fitting perfectly into modern capitalism.
People invoked 41
Bernard Williams positive
Praised for Moral Luck and its deep insight into temporality and retroactive moral judgment.
Tarana Burke positive
Founder of Me Too; Žižek notes she herself attacked newer forms of Me Too for going wrong.
Rumor that he visited Škocjan Caves and got the idea of hell from there.
Robert Brandom positive
Cited for his analytic reading of Hegel; Žižek doesn't agree with it but finds it well-elaborated and beautiful.
Jacques Lacan positive
Žižek's teacher; cited for the reversal of Dostoevsky ('if there is no God, everything is prohibited'), the jealous husband example, and the point that biological woman can symbolically have masculine identity.
Charles Sanders Peirce positive
Noted as considered the beginning of analytic philosophy, but was actually a Hegelian.
Jodi Dean positive
Cited alongside Varoufakis for the neo-feudalism theory.
Cited as invoking the psychoanalytic mechanism of prohibition turning into desire for prohibition.
Donald Trump negative
Referenced as 'beloved President Trump' (ironically) and 'shithole of a country' (referring to Trump's comment about Slovenia's region).
Larry David positive
Creator of Curb Your Enthusiasm; the Auschwitz/reality TV survivor episode is used to illustrate how comedy preserves the horror of Auschwitz.
Mentioned by interviewer in context of a debate with Jordan Peterson about truth.
Saul Kripke positive
Naming and Necessity described as one of the formative books of his youth.
Galileo Galilei positive
Credited as the first big break from everyday ontology, establishing that objects in motion without external influence move at constant velocity, contradicting common sense.
Donald Davidson positive
Mentioned as an analytic philosopher Žižek was in contact with and admired.
Jeff Bezos negative
Cited as example of new oligarchs in neo-feudalism who collectivize our commons and charge rent.
George Orwell positive
Cited for defining freedom of speech as the ability to tell people what they don't want to hear.
Adolf Hitler negative
Discussed for his rhetorical trick of providing a 'plot' (conspiracy + narrative) to explain social crisis, and for being influenced by Lueger.
Bernie Sanders positive
Praised for saying the left's target should be Trump voters, not middle-of-the-road Democrats.
Alain Aspect positive
One of three quantum physics experimenters who got the Nobel Prize for confirming quantum entanglement.
Italian psychoanalyst in Trieste who consulted Freud about two impotent patients, including the corrupt Slovene.
Mentioned as playing Hamlet in Kurosawa's adaptation.
Yanis Varoufakis positive
Cited for the theory that liberal capitalism is being replaced by neo-feudalism.
Carl Jung negative
Rejected for imagining the unconscious as a deep inner truth to arrive at, Žižek insists the unconscious is dirty inconsistent fantasies and lies.
Michel Foucault negative
Cited as representative of the postmodern position that each discourse produces its own truth, which Žižek explicitly rejects.
Peter Sloterdijk positive
Cited for the concept of cynical reason ('I know very well, but so what').
Mentioned briefly as another candidate for founder of analytic philosophy.
Jordan Peterson negative
Mentioned as someone who quotes Dostoevsky's phrase; implicitly grouped with fundamentalists.
Mentioned as one of Bohr's true philosophical loves alongside Kant.
William Shakespeare positive
Used as example of ontological openness: his work is immanently open and we may understand him better than he understood himself.
Niels Bohr positive
Cited for 'shut up and calculate' and the Copenhagen interpretation; Žižek appreciates Bohr's insight that we are part of the measured reality but criticizes his refusal to ask about the nature of reality.
Cited for 'socialism or barbarism', Žižek notes Stalinism answered this with 'both.'
Vladimir Putin negative
Criticized for exploiting anti-colonial rhetoric to gain support in third world countries for the war in Ukraine.
Karl Lueger negative
Anti-Semitic mayor of Vienna, influence on Hitler; appears in Freud's cave anecdote as 'Lüge' (lie), symbolizing the fundamental lie in the unconscious.
Akira Kurosawa positive
Cited for his Hamlet adaptation 'Only Bad People Can Sleep Well' (The Bad Sleep Well) as the best film version of Hamlet.
Mentioned in passing regarding what Chomsky might think of Žižek's belief in scientific truth.
Cited for the thesis that fascism posits society as harmonious body with antagonism introduced by external intruder; also critiqued for retaining teleology that Hegel lacks.
Sigmund Freud positive
Central figure throughout; cited for the discovery of the divided subject, the unconscious as dirty fantasies not deep truth, the Slovene patient anecdote, and the realization that truth cannot be directly declared.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Central figure; read as thinker of contingency, ontological openness, and retroactive necessity; argued to be more materialist than Marx.
Cited as an influence on Bohr (subjective constitution of reality) and as the philosopher whose antinomies Hegel displaces into the thing itself.
Albert Einstein negative
Cited for insisting on objective determined reality in his polemics with Bohr; his 'God is not playing dice' position is implicitly challenged by quantum incompleteness.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky negative
Cited for the phrase 'If there is no God, everything is permitted', which Žižek/Lacan reverses.
What it argues
Permissiveness turning into prohibitionPolitical correctness as authoritarian divisivenessPsychoanalysis as social/cultural critiqueThe false opposition between biological determinism and trans ideologyHegel as thinker of contingency and ontological opennessQuantum physics and materialism without matterLove as violence and fateAntisemitism's structural function for the fascist worldviewUnholy political alliances (anti-colonialism + homophobia, anti-imperialism + Putin apologism)Cynical reason and the inefficiency of stating truth
Dialectical moves 12
“If there is no God, then everything is prohibited. If there is God (subjectively, as instrument), then everything is permitted.”
Lacan's reversal of Dostoevsky: the absence of the big Other produces prohibition, not freedom; acting as instrument of God permits everything.
“Permissiveness turns into its opposite — it produces its own version of even worse oppression and regulation.”
The central reversal: official permissiveness generates prohibition, not liberation.
“The prohibition of desire turns over into a desire for prohibition.”
Classic psychoanalytic inversion: what is prohibited becomes the object of enjoyment itself.
“The true question is not why Nazis are anti-Semitic, but why Nazis need the figure of the Jew to maintain their worldview.”
Shifts from the content of the accusation to the structural function of the Jew for the antisemite's worldview.
“Hegel is more materialist than Marx himself.”
Inverts the standard hierarchy: Marx retains teleology, Hegel insists on radical openness of the future.
“You don't get the truth by excluding the subject; the problem is to include the subject in.”
Reverses the objectivist assumption: truth requires acknowledging the subject's participation in reality, not removing it.
“Freedom is its own form of necessity.”
True freedom is not contingency (throwing a coin) but is experienced as fate, free yet necessary.
“What if the thing in itself is in some sense contradictory? Why should contradictions be only subjective?”
Hegel's displacement of Kant's antinomies: contradiction is not a limit of our knowledge but belongs to reality itself.
“The Curb Your Enthusiasm joke works precisely because we all know Auschwitz was the true horror; the true obscenity would have been to have the Auschwitz survivor win.”
Reverses the surface reading: the joke's apparent trivialization of Auschwitz is actually what preserves its incomparability.
“It's not enough to publicly tell the truth; there is a way to tell the truth which is the deepest lie.”
Reverses the enlightenment assumption: truth declared in the wrong way renders itself ineffective or becomes a lie.
“Free associations means precisely that they are not really free.”
The term is totally ironic, free associations are determined by unconscious prejudices.
“We caught God with his pants down.”
Theological inversion: God's creation is incomplete, not because of our ignorance but because reality itself is ontologically unfinished.
Claims 31
asserts
Psychoanalysis is needed today not just as personal therapy but as societal and cultural critique.psychoanalysis
asserts
Permissiveness, instead of enabling open pleasurable life, produces its own version of even worse oppression and regulation.permissiveness and prohibition
asserts
If there is no God, everything is prohibited; if there is God (subjectively, as instrument), everything is permitted.Lacan's reversal of Dostoevsky
rejects
Political correctness is formally against oppression but functions socially as an extremely authoritarian, divisive, oppressive mechanism.political correctness
rejects
Political correctness introduces divisions into the left rather than opening space for united left action on basic issues.political correctness and left unity
asserts
The left should seek common platform with anti-abortion voters around shared material interests like healthcare and child support rather than simply attacking them.abortion politics and left strategy
asserts
Academic life should be a space where you can say very problematic things, not a safe space.academic freedom
reframes
The opposition between biological determinism and trans ideology is false; both miss the psychoanalytic dimension in between.sex/gender debate
rejects
Trans ideology often relies on a pre-Freudian subject who deep in themselves knows what they want — contradicting the psychoanalytic discovery of the divided subject.trans ideology and subjectivity
asserts
Sexual identities are socially constructed but in a self-contradictory, antagonistic way that subjects are mostly unaware of.sexual identity construction
asserts
Permissiveness itself leads to growing impotence, frigidity, and similar symptoms, as illustrated by Freud's Slovene patient.permissiveness and impotence
asserts
Today's racism functions through fetishist disavowal: 'I know very well but nonetheless...' rather than simple ignorance.racism and disavowal
asserts
We have moved beyond 'I know very well but' to 'I know very well and so what, I go on doing the same' — cynical reason.cynical reason
asserts
It is not enough to publicly tell the truth; truth must be set in a socially efficient way, otherwise it can render the truth ineffective.truth and social efficacy
rejects
Art biennales that denounce capitalism and colonialism fit perfectly into modern capitalism — stating the truth while rendering it ineffective.political art
asserts
The unconscious is not a deep inner truth about yourself (contra Jung) but a domain of dirty inconsistent fantasies, desires, and fundamental lies.the unconscious
asserts
The duty of theorists is to hurt people; truth is painful, and freedom of speech means being able to tell people what they don't want to hear.truth and violence
asserts
Love is the most violent thing psychologically — it throws your daily life off balance, neglects friends and job, and is experienced as fate.love as violence
asserts
Falling in love is never a deliberate present-moment choice; you discover retroactively that you already are in love.love and retroactive decision
asserts
Freedom at its highest has the form of fate — free decisions (love, identity change) are experienced as necessity, not as simple free choice.freedom and fate
reframes
The true question about antisemitism is not why Nazis are antisemitic but why Nazis desperately need the figure of the Jew to maintain their worldview.antisemitism
asserts
Fascism's fundamental premise is that society is a harmonious body and antagonism is introduced by an external intruder (the Jew).fascism and antisemitism
asserts
Hegel is more materialist than Marx because Marx still has teleology while Hegel insists the future is radically open.Hegel vs Marx
asserts
Hegel is the ultimate thinker of contingency: teleology doesn't predetermine development; once a thing happens, it retroactively becomes necessary.Hegel and contingency
asserts
Quantum physics should be read in a strict materialist way, not as confirming that there is no objective reality.quantum physics and materialism
asserts
Reality is ontologically incomplete in itself, not merely epistemologically incomplete due to the limits of our knowledge.ontological incompleteness
asserts
We should not be abstractly anti-capitalist because small creative capitalists are also under threat from new oligarchs in neo-feudalism.anti-capitalism strategy
asserts
You don't get the truth by excluding the subject; the problem is to include the subject in reality — the Hegelian-Bohr lesson.subject and object
asserts
What if reality itself is contradictory? Hegel displaces Kant's antinomies from the subject into the thing itself.Hegel and Kant
asserts
Unholy alliances — anti-colonialism used to justify homophobia, anti-imperialism aligning with Putin — are what make him pessimistic today.unholy alliances
asserts
We can better understand Shakespeare than Shakespeare understood himself because his work is immanently open and antagonistic in meaning.interpretation and ontological openness
Quotes 16
“We live in a world where you can do that consensually, but you cannot call somebody a wrong name, that you are suspended. We live in a crazy world.”Slavoj Žižek · permissiveness paradox
“If there is no God, then everything is prohibited. And the opposite: if there is God, then everything is permitted.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacan's reversal of Dostoevsky
“It's no longer 'I'm doing it although I don't know what I'm doing,' but 'I know what I'm doing, something horrible, but so what, still I'm doing it.'”Slavoj Žižek · cynical reason
“There is a way to tell the truth which is the deepest lie. Truth must be set in a socially efficient way.”Slavoj Žižek · truth and social efficacy
“The unconscious is not a deep truth about yourself. It's a domain of dirty inconsistent fantasies, desires, lies, fundamental lies.”Slavoj Žižek · the unconscious contra Jung
“Freedom is its own form of necessity.”Slavoj Žižek · freedom and fate
“Love is for me an extremely violent thing. In the sense of disturbing, perturbing your everyday welfare.”Slavoj Žižek · love as violence
“The true question is not why am I anti-Semitic, the true question is: why do I as a Nazi desperately need the figure of the Jew to maintain my worldview?”Slavoj Žižek · antisemitism's structural function
“Hegel is more materialist than Marx himself.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel vs Marx
“You don't get the truth by excluding the subject. The problem is to include the subject in.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel-Bohr lesson on subjectivity
“What if reality is in itself incomplete?”Slavoj Žižek · ontological incompleteness
“We caught God with his pants down.”Slavoj Žižek · God's incomplete creation
“Free associations means precisely that they are not really free.”Slavoj Žižek · irony of free associations
“Our duty as theorists is to hurt people.”Slavoj Žižek · truth hurts
“Maybe with a distance we can better understand Shakespeare than Shakespeare understood himself.”Slavoj Žižek · interpretive openness
“What if it can be both, barbarism and socialism?”Slavoj Žižek · Stalinism as answer to Rosa Luxemburg
Transcript 23 turns
Slavoj Žižek
I read somewhere that the Nazis had, this is very which shocked me when I read about it, had some kind of a simple metal object like to crack the nuts, made industrially for concentration camps as a special form of torture to crack—No way—Yeah, isn't this horrible? Okay, then I wanted to check this, like so that I will not be accused of inventing it, so I went to Google and put on ball crushers, crushing testicles, and you know what I got? Some ten sites today for masochists, they are industrially produced. They cost very nicely two to three hundred dollars, you know. I
I read somewhere that the Nazis had, this is very which shocked me when I read about it, had some kind of a simple metal object like to crack the nuts, made industrially for concentration camps as a special form of torture to crack—No way—Yeah, isn't this horrible? Okay, then I wanted to check this, like so that I will not be accused of inventing it, so I went to Google and put on ball crushers, crushing testicles, and you know what I got? Some ten sites today for masochists, they are industrially produced. They cost very nicely two to three hundred dollars, you know. I
unknown
hope you didn't test
hope you didn't test
Slavoj Žižek
them. No, no, no, but you put your testicles in it and then you can regulate how much your balls are squeezed. Then you have on the side holes for needles if you want to torture yourself more. This is, I think, the world we live in. That what half a century ago, a little bit more, was a terrifying object of torture, now you can buy it, it’s advertised, and we live in a world where you can do that consensually, but you cannot call somebody a wrong name, that you are suspended, no? We live in a crazy world.
them. No, no, no, but you put your testicles in it and then you can regulate how much your balls are squeezed. Then you have on the side holes for needles if you want to torture yourself more. This is, I think, the world we live in. That what half a century ago, a little bit more, was a terrifying object of torture, now you can buy it, it’s advertised, and we live in a world where you can do that consensually, but you cannot call somebody a wrong name, that you are suspended, no? We live in a crazy world.
unknown
Hellolings, this is Mother Goose Robinson Erhardt with Pints the Podcat, who does not want to be disturbed, here with the introduction to Robinson's Podcast number And this is a very special Robinson's Podcast not only because it's the only Robinson's Podcast number but because this episode is with Slavoj Žižek, who is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor at New York University, and a senior researcher at the University of Ljubljana’s Department of Philosophy. So, it is quite hard for me to put my finger on just what it is that we talk about in this episode. It would be very difficult for me to do so without repeating the entire episode. But I say this in my—in our conversation, I think, or at least something to this effect—but Slavoj’s capacity for interesting and insightful free association is not only a psychoanalyst’s dream, but also has to be unmatched across humanity. I think we started out with the intention to talk about why we—humans, or humans in general—need psychoanalysis today, but then it quickly became a lot of other things as well. We touch on wokeness, falling in love, quantum theory and the ontological openness of reality, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Nazis and World War III, and a hundred other things. But podcast aside, this was absolutely one of the most fun conversations or hour-and-halfs that I’ve ever had. Slavoj is an incredible talent; he’s a brilliant guy in so many domains, and I not only learned a lot from him, but I hope to learn a lot more from him in the future. Now, please leave comments and likes and subscribe, and speaking of the absurd, I eat a pint of ice cream every day, so you can join me for that on Twitch or YouTube at RobinsonEats. And now, without any further ado, I hope that you enjoy this conversation as much as I enjoyed having it with the man, the myth, the legend, Slavoj Žižek.
Hellolings, this is Mother Goose Robinson Erhardt with Pints the Podcat, who does not want to be disturbed, here with the introduction to Robinson's Podcast number And this is a very special Robinson's Podcast not only because it's the only Robinson's Podcast number but because this episode is with Slavoj Žižek, who is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor at New York University, and a senior researcher at the University of Ljubljana’s Department of Philosophy. So, it is quite hard for me to put my finger on just what it is that we talk about in this episode. It would be very difficult for me to do so without repeating the entire episode. But I say this in my—in our conversation, I think, or at least something to this effect—but Slavoj’s capacity for interesting and insightful free association is not only a psychoanalyst’s dream, but also has to be unmatched across humanity. I think we started out with the intention to talk about why we—humans, or humans in general—need psychoanalysis today, but then it quickly became a lot of other things as well. We touch on wokeness, falling in love, quantum theory and the ontological openness of reality, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Nazis and World War III, and a hundred other things. But podcast aside, this was absolutely one of the most fun conversations or hour-and-halfs that I’ve ever had. Slavoj is an incredible talent; he’s a brilliant guy in so many domains, and I not only learned a lot from him, but I hope to learn a lot more from him in the future. Now, please leave comments and likes and subscribe, and speaking of the absurd, I eat a pint of ice cream every day, so you can join me for that on Twitch or YouTube at RobinsonEats. And now, without any further ado, I hope that you enjoy this conversation as much as I enjoyed having it with the man, the myth, the legend, Slavoj Žižek.
unknown
As I mentioned when we decided on a topic, just to set some context before we begin, when you say that we need psychoanalysis today more than ever, am I right—and I think I’m quite right—in assuming that you mean psychoanalysis as a form of societal or cultural criticism rather than a form of personal therapy?
As I mentioned when we decided on a topic, just to set some context before we begin, when you say that we need psychoanalysis today more than ever, am I right—and I think I’m quite right—in assuming that you mean psychoanalysis as a form of societal or cultural criticism rather than a form of personal therapy?
Slavoj Žižek
Yes, although I would not underestimate psychoanalysis as a form of social therapy. You know why? Because what was clear already with Freud and what we should always bear in mind today is that the archetypal model of psychoanalysis, as it were, it’s not, let’s say, you or me—okay, to avoid embarrassing terms, I will say me. Let’s say I have certain problems with my sexuality and whatever, impotence and so on, and then psychoanalysis enters and enables me to overcome these obstacles. If there are unconscious prohibitions to make them explicit, or to get rid of oppressive authorities, paternal authority, whatever, so that at the end I can enjoy. But this is not Freud. Freud is today, especially by feminists, often accused of paternal—paternalistic bias. But Freud makes it very clear, already Freud, that today’s paradox, the paradox of a society in which we live—and here psychoanalysis, not exactly as Freud put it, but worked through, can help us. Isn’t the paradox today—and this intrigues me—that we live officially in permissive societies? Different types of permissiveness. But how this permissiveness, instead of enabling open, pleasurable life, produces its own version of even worse oppression and regulation. Let me give you two—this is my basic point. Lacan, Jacques Lacan, my teacher, already dead, pointed out how from the psychoanalytic standpoint, Dostoevsky’s famous phrase, which is today quoted by many new fundamentalists, I think even the one who is not simply a fundamentalist, Jordan Peterson, and so on: "If there is no God, then everything is permitted." My conclusion, following Lacan—Lacan says this—is that it’s exactly the opposite. If there is no God, then you end up in a situation where everything is prohibited. And the opposite: if there is God, for you subjectively, directly, in the sense that you think you can act like an instrument of God, then everything is—then everything is permitted. Two very simple, extreme opposite examples. Isn't this the logic of today’s so-called religious fundamentalism? In all religious fundamentalist regimes, yes, they appear to have many, many prohibitions, but the basic fact is: if you act as an instrument of God, then since your acts are for you condoned, even enjoined by God himself, you can do basically everything. On the other hand, the true intrigue for me is permissiveness. You know, this obsession with overcoming obstacles, like in some forms of wokeness, Me Too—I know they are not the same, but I generalize. The idea is permissivity, all marginal sexual stances, sexual positions and so on should be permitted, solicited, and the big enemy is paternal or patriarchal, whatever you call it, oppression. But what do we get as the final result of this permissiveness? We get—and I think it’s a deep necessity in this—we get political correctness. Which, I don’t disagree with its goals against racism, sexism and so on. I disagree with its form. It is formally, of course, against oppression, but the way it functions socially, it’s an extremely authoritarian, divisive, oppressive way. What interests me is this: that it de facto imposes a certain set of prohibitions. You shouldn't use this word, you shouldn't do this, do that. And I'm not only following the usual line, which is that—that—that political correctness is too rigorous, oppressive. No, it’s at the same time very arbitrary. Like, all of a sudden, certain phrases, certain words, whatever, certain acts become—become oppressive, are denounced as oppressive, they are de facto prohibited. And the logic is extremely severe. Like a couple of people we know, I will not even enumerate them, lose their career for saying, writing something maybe tasteless, maybe wrong, but not so horrible. So what interests me is this logic of how permissiveness returns, turns into its opposite. What do I mean by divisiveness? I mean this as many leftists have noted, that what the left needs today is large-scale solidarity, join on what unites us. For example, let me give you a concrete example. All these tensions about abortion today—I’m totally pro-abortion, to avoid any misunderstanding. But what I would have done is not to think how to dismiss, attack just those who are against abortion. I would try with the hope that in the long term they will be converted, to find some common space. I follow here Bernie Sanders, who said in a wonderful way years ago that our target should not be these middle-of-the-road Democrats, but Trump voters. You know, like my approach would be this one to an anti-abortionist: okay, I agree abortion is not a nice thing, but first at the level of facts, are we aware—I'm sure this is how it is in Slovenia, probably it’s also in the United States—that anti-abortionists portray a woman, a woman who wants an abortion as a rich career, upper-class career-oriented woman who just wants to pursue her profession and so on. No, the majority of abortions are—at least in my own country, Slovenia, it's well documented—are poor working-class women who live on the edge of poverty, who already have three, four children and so on and so on. So my approach to abortionists would be: let’s find a common platform, which is better healthcare, better support for children, education and so on and so on. You know, the left—the left—that’s why I think this stiff political correctness is even reactionary because it introduces divisions into the left. Instead of opening up the space for united left for some basic issues, it introduces the logic of suspicion. How did you mean that joke? But didn't you mean it wrongly? And so on. Another problem I have here—and this brings us, sorry, closer to finally, I didn’t lose my thread, don’t be afraid—closer to psychoanalysis is, you know where I see the patronizing attitude of the standard form, forms—there are different, I know—of political correctness? This use of the term—this is already what I find extremely suspicious—use of the term pain, hurt. Like, you may hurt people with this. Yes, but I think that in—in contrast to ordinary life, well, where we should be more careful, I admit it and so on and so on. Isn't academic life precisely a space where you should be allowed to say very problematic things? It's not a safe space. It’s a space where you can openly debate what—what makes our outer, normal life, non-academic reality, unsafe. And here, another problem that I have is—many people have noticed this—this lack of refinement, irony and so on. Let me give you an example. Did you—are you from time to time looking Curb Your Enthusiasm by Larry David? I wish I were. I watched the first season many years ago and absolutely loved it. I know, I know, I also don't have time to go through. But do you remember, was it already in the first season, one wonderful episode where at a party in his home an old Auschwitz survivor and the survivor of the this Survivor reality TV show debate who suffered more. And of course, because it's a comedy, the reality TV survivor wins, he suffered more. And people exploded: this is making fun of Auschwitz and so on. I think no, it’s exactly the opposite. This works as a joke—why? Precisely because we all know that Auschwitz was the true horror, that to compare the two is absurd. The true obscenity would have been, I think, to have the Auschwitz survivor—survivor win. Because then it's no longer a joke. Which is obviously true, but it would have meant that you can even compare them, you know. You already concede too much. You see, and I fear a threat for all this ambiguities and so on. My experience from everyday life is that we can have very brutal, even—they may appear to be racist jokes, which are a form of solidarity even. In Europe at least, when I meet a friend—not just from ex-Yugoslavia, from Germany, blah, blah, whatever—we—the only reliable sign of real closeness or friendship is that you share an obscenity. You insult him, apparently he insults you. If you take this away, you end up in a terrifying universe. On the other hand, there are even civilizations who know how to do it. I think it’s mostly United Kingdom and Japan, where speaking in a very respectful, polite way, they nonetheless do it so that you can feel extremely patronizing aggressiveness and so on and so on. I so—but let me go and then I will allow you to ask questions. My favorite example. Today—and here I am addressing also your potential public, that’s what I wanted to say in the introduction. Do you know that now we have in public debates about sex, gender and so on, two opposed positions, but they share some basic stances, I claim? On the one hand, so-called—I don't even know how to call them—sex biologists, who claim: okay, let’s not play cultural games, gender socially constructed, the basic thing is still sex as biologically determined. On the other hand, we have—I even don’t know how to call them—trans ideology, those who think sex is simply a social construct, a matter of a personal choice. I claim that this opposition is false. In false in the sense that, of course, sex, your sexual identity—on purpose I don't want to distinguish between sex and gender—that your sexual identity, your sexual practices have some base—not—not base in the sense of firm foundation, but they relate to something which obviously involves a biological dimension, but of course they reelaborate, change it completely. So I totally agree that our—in this sense, our sexual identities are socially constructed. But my reproach is that often with those woke feminists, trans and so on, they are way too subjectivist in the sense that they identify social construction with how you feel, does it hurt you or not. They, in other words, although they usually as a rule reject psychoanalysis as—as—as—as—as—as pre-feminist, relying on paternal authority, 19th century and so on. The type of subject to which trans ideologists often, not all of them—I have many friends there—refer is a simple pre-Freudian subject who deep in himself, herself, itself, whatever you put—and I agree with this—who deep in themselves know what they want, they know what hurts them, they know what they really are, and we should just—and this is not a biological fact, it's their symbolic construct, social identity, and we just have to allow them to become what they are, again not biologically but at the level of their identity. Now I think—and here psychoanalysis enters—something is missing here. We don't have just biology and then these subjective choices and so on. I agree that our sexual identities are socially constructed. But they are constructed—here the lesson of psychoanalysis entered—in a very self-contradictory, antagonist way, mostly you are not even aware of how it works. The basic lesson of Freud is simply: our subjectivity is split subjectivity. Often we think that we want one thing, we really desire another thing. Often we—this is the basic lesson of psychoanalysis—often our desire is perverted. We enjoy something that we find at the same time disgusting. Or the most perverted example, often invoked by Judith Butler herself, the basic mechanism of psychoanalysis is that the prohibition of the desire turns over into a desire for prohibition. These are classic obsessional symptoms. You have rituals to keep at bay what you are afraid to be, but then you begin to enjoy this very oppression. So here for me is a classic example of how what both poles—trans ideology and biologist determinist ideology—what they miss. What they miss is precisely the dimension in between, which is the topic of psychoanalysis. Can I conclude, maybe you know it and then I will give you all that, with another example that I love? You know why I love it, maybe you know it, because it concerns my own, as your beloved President Trump would have put it, ex-president, I hope not the future one, shithole of a country, Slovenia. You know that Freud had permanent contact with Edoardo Weiss, an Italian psychoanalyst who worked in Trieste, close to Slovenia. And Edoardo Weiss, Italian psychoanalyst, asked Freud for an advice. He said: I have two patients with the same symptom, total impotence. One is an upper-level, very cultivated Italian, who is impotent because his wife died and he feels somehow responsible for his wife’s death and superego pressure: you are prohibited to enjoy. Then Freud—Weiss says to Freud—then there is a Slovene guy, totally corrupted, incredibly corrupted, years old, lying, cheating. Freud—Weiss discovered that he cheated even with psychoanalysis. His father of this corrupted Slovene gave him some money to pay the analyst, but the Slovene guy told his father a higher sum of money so that he profited from this and so on. I mean, now this is—the first case is too simple. So what, yeah, yeah, you overcome this, you somehow through analysis convince the patient, the Italian, that his—his impotence is psychologically caused, you redeem him, you allow him to get rid of his guilt feeling, he will be again able to have so-called normal sexual life. But the paradox of Slovene is that he was practically without any ethical ideas, totally permissive, doing whatever he wanted. And he was totally impotent. And you know what Freud says? Freud says: this Slovene is so corrupted that our psychoanalytic art cannot yet cope with people like that. I think that this is where we are today. In this precise paradox: how permissiveness itself leads to growing, rising impotence, frigidity and so on and so on. At this level, I think psychoanalysis is needed at different levels even. At the level of not only as people think of understanding today’s religious fundamentalism, not only at understanding how well-intentioned feminist actions like Me Too, which I think I totally support, but you know who is the founder of Me Too, Tarana Burke, no? And you know that she now attacked this new forms of Me Too, why did they go wrong. Another thing where psychoanalysis is needed, especially psychoanalytic theory of as opposed to oppression, repression, of not denial but disavowal, fetishist disavowal. Its formula is "je sais bien, mais quand même," you know, "I know very well what the truth is, but nonetheless I still think there is something in it" and so on and so on. And we find this logic in numerous examples. Like the typical anti-Semitic guy today will say, "I know there are nice Jews, intelligent, I know many of them, I know..." and then comes, "but still there is something strange in them" or whatever. You know, racism functions like this today. What I’m saying is that today, as me and my colleagues in Slovenia developed, we are in an even more complex situation. It’s no longer "I know very well but," it’s "I know very well and so what, I go on doing the same." You know what was the model for me? Look, true problems are today not repressed. Take the Glasgow conference two years ago against global warming. They were saying all the right things in principle, not in details, like: you know global warming is a phenomenon to which to cope with—with it we will have to change radically our entire society and so on and so on, economic, political, social, whatever. But it was already said in a way which included that nothing will follow. This is what I call, following the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, cynical reason. It’s no longer "I'm doing it although I don't know what I'm doing," but "I know what I'm doing, something horrible, but so what, still I'm doing it." And this is so shocking for me in art domain, since I see some paintings behind you, this is art. I’m so—I don't want to have anything with this big art Biennales, Venice, Kassel and so on, because I sometimes look at their program. It's even extremely vulgar colonialism, anti-colonialism, Marxism. They usually begin with: we are all caught in the circulation of capital, we should fight it, we should decolonize art, blah, blah, all that. But precisely as such, this art Biennales fit perfectly modern capitalism. So it’s a very strange situation where you say the truth, but at the same time you render the truth ineffective. It doesn't matter. It's not enough to publicly tell the truth. You and this is also a big lesson of psychoanalysis, that in his early years Freud thought, "okay, I explain your symptom, the moment you know it the symptom will disappear." No, Freud got instantly in a couple of years there, in—around I think—into this that no, truth cannot be directly declared. There is a way to tell the truth which is the deepest lie. Truth must be set in a socially efficient way. And this today in our permissiveness is becoming very difficult. I talked too much, my God, now please grill me. No, I have plenty of questions and comments because there was a lot there. But one thing, I mean, you mentioned the word hurt being used a lot these days, and here the word violence is quite popular for speech deemed offensive. But using it, I mean, it trivializes actual violence in the way that seriously treating the Survivor's story on Curb Your Enthusiasm as a survivor in the same way as the Auschwitz survivor trivializes the Auschwitz experience. And then I was also struck by your example concerning obscenities, because this idea of—sorry, obscenity. Sorry, obscenities. No, sorry, I got the word. Okay, yeah. This idea of being unable to share obscenities makes it difficult to make friends these days, since these jokes or phrases which were once taken and understood as pretense are now prohibited. But in a certain way, it also strengthens old bonds because old friends are the only people you can speak like that with. And then the last thing that really comes to mind is returning to this discussion of permissiveness. And something I'm missing, but I'm sorry, maybe I'm just being obtuse, or maybe you could just make it more explicit, is how psychoanalysis explicitly figures into your analysis of this situation involving permissiveness turning into prohibition, where this idea of God and permissiveness arises out of distinctly psychoanalytical, like Lacanian, theory. This last question, if I may very briefly now, I will try to discipline myself. No, don't be disciplined. First, this last—no, no, what I mean is that Freud, when he advised Edoardo Weiss, dropped that Slovene, was not aware of his own great discovery, which is precisely that—you know, one idea we have to get rid of when we speak about the unconscious. And Freud wasn't always clear about it. The unconscious is not like Jung, Carl Gustav Jung, imagined it: a deep inner truth at which you should arrive so that then you learn about your true self. Unconscious is a domain of dirty inconsistent fantasies, desires, lies, fundamental lies and so on. Unconscious—the unconscious is not a deep truth about yourself. There is—I don't want to lose time, very briefly—there is another wonderful anecdote by Freud. He visited some—some—some caves in southern Slovenia called Škocjan Caves, which are terrifying. All this world beneath the earth—it’s terrifying. There is even a rumor that Dante visited that place, it’s a real rumor based on some letters, and he got the idea of hell from—from there. But then something miraculous happened to Freud. You know who—whom he met there in the deepest depth of hell? Karl Lueger, who was the German—sorry, Austrian—politician, Mayor of Vienna, the main influence of Hitler, extremely anti-Semitic, the proto-right-wing anti-Semitic populist. And the beauty in German language is that Lueger, "Lüge," means lie. He met the fundamental lie there. This is—this is—this is the deep message. From here I come to violence. You know, the basic lesson of psychoanalysis is that—violence is again a very ambiguous notion. For example, when we say "don't be violent, don't hurt people." But I'm sorry to say, and I'm not saying this just as a Freudian but as a Hegelian or whatever, for most of us, truth hurts. It’s extremely painful. So, yes, at least in theory, it’s another question how do you do this in daily life. In this sense, our duty as theorists is to hurt people. My witness will be here somebody whom even the liberals like, George Orwell, who said freedom of speech or press—I don’t know—is to be able, allowed to tell people what they don't want to hear. If they're not allowed to do this, don't speak about freedom. And I think that here the political correctness often misses this point. For example, I quoted this in one of my texts, how I don't know which university, maybe Cambridge or another college in the United Kingdom, trans people organized protest, protests because they invited a certain anthropologist, biologist, I don’t know, lady who was in practical matters totally pro-trans. No problem there. But just in theory, her point was that biology nonetheless plays a certain role. Your sexual identity is not simply socially constructed. Now, again, in practical political acts she was totally on the right side. And what shocked me is that the reaction of the trans community was not only to protest her giving a talk, but they even, at—for those two hours when this lady gave a talk, they opened up two, three safe rooms with—with cakes and tea so that those for whom it would be too traumatic to hear this... Why didn't they—I'm here an old-fashioned rational leftist—why didn't they go there and confront her with calm, rational argumentation? It can easily be said... I am not here, to avoid the misunderstanding, biologist determinist. Jacques Lacan put it clearly that a woman—biological woman—who was identified by birth as a woman, can well symbolically have a masculine identity, and the other way around, and there are possibilities of third transpositions and so on and so on. Yes, all this is totally open. I’m just saying don’t identify this position with simple personal feeling of free choice. Why not? Because you know there are external choices, like—sorry for vulgarity—you go to a—you go to a—to a—you go to a store to buy your dessert and then you say, "Oh my God, what should I choose? Strawberry cake or cheesecake or chocolate cake?" Yes, but your gender, sexual, whatever you want—I on purpose confuse them—identity is not such a choice. It is a
Yes, although I would not underestimate psychoanalysis as a form of social therapy. You know why? Because what was clear already with Freud and what we should always bear in mind today is that the archetypal model of psychoanalysis, as it were, it’s not, let’s say, you or me—okay, to avoid embarrassing terms, I will say me. Let’s say I have certain problems with my sexuality and whatever, impotence and so on, and then psychoanalysis enters and enables me to overcome these obstacles. If there are unconscious prohibitions to make them explicit, or to get rid of oppressive authorities, paternal authority, whatever, so that at the end I can enjoy. But this is not Freud. Freud is today, especially by feminists, often accused of paternal—paternalistic bias. But Freud makes it very clear, already Freud, that today’s paradox, the paradox of a society in which we live—and here psychoanalysis, not exactly as Freud put it, but worked through, can help us. Isn’t the paradox today—and this intrigues me—that we live officially in permissive societies? Different types of permissiveness. But how this permissiveness, instead of enabling open, pleasurable life, produces its own version of even worse oppression and regulation. Let me give you two—this is my basic point. Lacan, Jacques Lacan, my teacher, already dead, pointed out how from the psychoanalytic standpoint, Dostoevsky’s famous phrase, which is today quoted by many new fundamentalists, I think even the one who is not simply a fundamentalist, Jordan Peterson, and so on: "If there is no God, then everything is permitted." My conclusion, following Lacan—Lacan says this—is that it’s exactly the opposite. If there is no God, then you end up in a situation where everything is prohibited. And the opposite: if there is God, for you subjectively, directly, in the sense that you think you can act like an instrument of God, then everything is—then everything is permitted. Two very simple, extreme opposite examples. Isn't this the logic of today’s so-called religious fundamentalism? In all religious fundamentalist regimes, yes, they appear to have many, many prohibitions, but the basic fact is: if you act as an instrument of God, then since your acts are for you condoned, even enjoined by God himself, you can do basically everything. On the other hand, the true intrigue for me is permissiveness. You know, this obsession with overcoming obstacles, like in some forms of wokeness, Me Too—I know they are not the same, but I generalize. The idea is permissivity, all marginal sexual stances, sexual positions and so on should be permitted, solicited, and the big enemy is paternal or patriarchal, whatever you call it, oppression. But what do we get as the final result of this permissiveness? We get—and I think it’s a deep necessity in this—we get political correctness. Which, I don’t disagree with its goals against racism, sexism and so on. I disagree with its form. It is formally, of course, against oppression, but the way it functions socially, it’s an extremely authoritarian, divisive, oppressive way. What interests me is this: that it de facto imposes a certain set of prohibitions. You shouldn't use this word, you shouldn't do this, do that. And I'm not only following the usual line, which is that—that—that political correctness is too rigorous, oppressive. No, it’s at the same time very arbitrary. Like, all of a sudden, certain phrases, certain words, whatever, certain acts become—become oppressive, are denounced as oppressive, they are de facto prohibited. And the logic is extremely severe. Like a couple of people we know, I will not even enumerate them, lose their career for saying, writing something maybe tasteless, maybe wrong, but not so horrible. So what interests me is this logic of how permissiveness returns, turns into its opposite. What do I mean by divisiveness? I mean this as many leftists have noted, that what the left needs today is large-scale solidarity, join on what unites us. For example, let me give you a concrete example. All these tensions about abortion today—I’m totally pro-abortion, to avoid any misunderstanding. But what I would have done is not to think how to dismiss, attack just those who are against abortion. I would try with the hope that in the long term they will be converted, to find some common space. I follow here Bernie Sanders, who said in a wonderful way years ago that our target should not be these middle-of-the-road Democrats, but Trump voters. You know, like my approach would be this one to an anti-abortionist: okay, I agree abortion is not a nice thing, but first at the level of facts, are we aware—I'm sure this is how it is in Slovenia, probably it’s also in the United States—that anti-abortionists portray a woman, a woman who wants an abortion as a rich career, upper-class career-oriented woman who just wants to pursue her profession and so on. No, the majority of abortions are—at least in my own country, Slovenia, it's well documented—are poor working-class women who live on the edge of poverty, who already have three, four children and so on and so on. So my approach to abortionists would be: let’s find a common platform, which is better healthcare, better support for children, education and so on and so on. You know, the left—the left—that’s why I think this stiff political correctness is even reactionary because it introduces divisions into the left. Instead of opening up the space for united left for some basic issues, it introduces the logic of suspicion. How did you mean that joke? But didn't you mean it wrongly? And so on. Another problem I have here—and this brings us, sorry, closer to finally, I didn’t lose my thread, don’t be afraid—closer to psychoanalysis is, you know where I see the patronizing attitude of the standard form, forms—there are different, I know—of political correctness? This use of the term—this is already what I find extremely suspicious—use of the term pain, hurt. Like, you may hurt people with this. Yes, but I think that in—in contrast to ordinary life, well, where we should be more careful, I admit it and so on and so on. Isn't academic life precisely a space where you should be allowed to say very problematic things? It's not a safe space. It’s a space where you can openly debate what—what makes our outer, normal life, non-academic reality, unsafe. And here, another problem that I have is—many people have noticed this—this lack of refinement, irony and so on. Let me give you an example. Did you—are you from time to time looking Curb Your Enthusiasm by Larry David? I wish I were. I watched the first season many years ago and absolutely loved it. I know, I know, I also don't have time to go through. But do you remember, was it already in the first season, one wonderful episode where at a party in his home an old Auschwitz survivor and the survivor of the this Survivor reality TV show debate who suffered more. And of course, because it's a comedy, the reality TV survivor wins, he suffered more. And people exploded: this is making fun of Auschwitz and so on. I think no, it’s exactly the opposite. This works as a joke—why? Precisely because we all know that Auschwitz was the true horror, that to compare the two is absurd. The true obscenity would have been, I think, to have the Auschwitz survivor—survivor win. Because then it's no longer a joke. Which is obviously true, but it would have meant that you can even compare them, you know. You already concede too much. You see, and I fear a threat for all this ambiguities and so on. My experience from everyday life is that we can have very brutal, even—they may appear to be racist jokes, which are a form of solidarity even. In Europe at least, when I meet a friend—not just from ex-Yugoslavia, from Germany, blah, blah, whatever—we—the only reliable sign of real closeness or friendship is that you share an obscenity. You insult him, apparently he insults you. If you take this away, you end up in a terrifying universe. On the other hand, there are even civilizations who know how to do it. I think it’s mostly United Kingdom and Japan, where speaking in a very respectful, polite way, they nonetheless do it so that you can feel extremely patronizing aggressiveness and so on and so on. I so—but let me go and then I will allow you to ask questions. My favorite example. Today—and here I am addressing also your potential public, that’s what I wanted to say in the introduction. Do you know that now we have in public debates about sex, gender and so on, two opposed positions, but they share some basic stances, I claim? On the one hand, so-called—I don't even know how to call them—sex biologists, who claim: okay, let’s not play cultural games, gender socially constructed, the basic thing is still sex as biologically determined. On the other hand, we have—I even don’t know how to call them—trans ideology, those who think sex is simply a social construct, a matter of a personal choice. I claim that this opposition is false. In false in the sense that, of course, sex, your sexual identity—on purpose I don't want to distinguish between sex and gender—that your sexual identity, your sexual practices have some base—not—not base in the sense of firm foundation, but they relate to something which obviously involves a biological dimension, but of course they reelaborate, change it completely. So I totally agree that our—in this sense, our sexual identities are socially constructed. But my reproach is that often with those woke feminists, trans and so on, they are way too subjectivist in the sense that they identify social construction with how you feel, does it hurt you or not. They, in other words, although they usually as a rule reject psychoanalysis as—as—as—as—as—as pre-feminist, relying on paternal authority, 19th century and so on. The type of subject to which trans ideologists often, not all of them—I have many friends there—refer is a simple pre-Freudian subject who deep in himself, herself, itself, whatever you put—and I agree with this—who deep in themselves know what they want, they know what hurts them, they know what they really are, and we should just—and this is not a biological fact, it's their symbolic construct, social identity, and we just have to allow them to become what they are, again not biologically but at the level of their identity. Now I think—and here psychoanalysis enters—something is missing here. We don't have just biology and then these subjective choices and so on. I agree that our sexual identities are socially constructed. But they are constructed—here the lesson of psychoanalysis entered—in a very self-contradictory, antagonist way, mostly you are not even aware of how it works. The basic lesson of Freud is simply: our subjectivity is split subjectivity. Often we think that we want one thing, we really desire another thing. Often we—this is the basic lesson of psychoanalysis—often our desire is perverted. We enjoy something that we find at the same time disgusting. Or the most perverted example, often invoked by Judith Butler herself, the basic mechanism of psychoanalysis is that the prohibition of the desire turns over into a desire for prohibition. These are classic obsessional symptoms. You have rituals to keep at bay what you are afraid to be, but then you begin to enjoy this very oppression. So here for me is a classic example of how what both poles—trans ideology and biologist determinist ideology—what they miss. What they miss is precisely the dimension in between, which is the topic of psychoanalysis. Can I conclude, maybe you know it and then I will give you all that, with another example that I love? You know why I love it, maybe you know it, because it concerns my own, as your beloved President Trump would have put it, ex-president, I hope not the future one, shithole of a country, Slovenia. You know that Freud had permanent contact with Edoardo Weiss, an Italian psychoanalyst who worked in Trieste, close to Slovenia. And Edoardo Weiss, Italian psychoanalyst, asked Freud for an advice. He said: I have two patients with the same symptom, total impotence. One is an upper-level, very cultivated Italian, who is impotent because his wife died and he feels somehow responsible for his wife’s death and superego pressure: you are prohibited to enjoy. Then Freud—Weiss says to Freud—then there is a Slovene guy, totally corrupted, incredibly corrupted, years old, lying, cheating. Freud—Weiss discovered that he cheated even with psychoanalysis. His father of this corrupted Slovene gave him some money to pay the analyst, but the Slovene guy told his father a higher sum of money so that he profited from this and so on. I mean, now this is—the first case is too simple. So what, yeah, yeah, you overcome this, you somehow through analysis convince the patient, the Italian, that his—his impotence is psychologically caused, you redeem him, you allow him to get rid of his guilt feeling, he will be again able to have so-called normal sexual life. But the paradox of Slovene is that he was practically without any ethical ideas, totally permissive, doing whatever he wanted. And he was totally impotent. And you know what Freud says? Freud says: this Slovene is so corrupted that our psychoanalytic art cannot yet cope with people like that. I think that this is where we are today. In this precise paradox: how permissiveness itself leads to growing, rising impotence, frigidity and so on and so on. At this level, I think psychoanalysis is needed at different levels even. At the level of not only as people think of understanding today’s religious fundamentalism, not only at understanding how well-intentioned feminist actions like Me Too, which I think I totally support, but you know who is the founder of Me Too, Tarana Burke, no? And you know that she now attacked this new forms of Me Too, why did they go wrong. Another thing where psychoanalysis is needed, especially psychoanalytic theory of as opposed to oppression, repression, of not denial but disavowal, fetishist disavowal. Its formula is "je sais bien, mais quand même," you know, "I know very well what the truth is, but nonetheless I still think there is something in it" and so on and so on. And we find this logic in numerous examples. Like the typical anti-Semitic guy today will say, "I know there are nice Jews, intelligent, I know many of them, I know..." and then comes, "but still there is something strange in them" or whatever. You know, racism functions like this today. What I’m saying is that today, as me and my colleagues in Slovenia developed, we are in an even more complex situation. It’s no longer "I know very well but," it’s "I know very well and so what, I go on doing the same." You know what was the model for me? Look, true problems are today not repressed. Take the Glasgow conference two years ago against global warming. They were saying all the right things in principle, not in details, like: you know global warming is a phenomenon to which to cope with—with it we will have to change radically our entire society and so on and so on, economic, political, social, whatever. But it was already said in a way which included that nothing will follow. This is what I call, following the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, cynical reason. It’s no longer "I'm doing it although I don't know what I'm doing," but "I know what I'm doing, something horrible, but so what, still I'm doing it." And this is so shocking for me in art domain, since I see some paintings behind you, this is art. I’m so—I don't want to have anything with this big art Biennales, Venice, Kassel and so on, because I sometimes look at their program. It's even extremely vulgar colonialism, anti-colonialism, Marxism. They usually begin with: we are all caught in the circulation of capital, we should fight it, we should decolonize art, blah, blah, all that. But precisely as such, this art Biennales fit perfectly modern capitalism. So it’s a very strange situation where you say the truth, but at the same time you render the truth ineffective. It doesn't matter. It's not enough to publicly tell the truth. You and this is also a big lesson of psychoanalysis, that in his early years Freud thought, "okay, I explain your symptom, the moment you know it the symptom will disappear." No, Freud got instantly in a couple of years there, in—around I think—into this that no, truth cannot be directly declared. There is a way to tell the truth which is the deepest lie. Truth must be set in a socially efficient way. And this today in our permissiveness is becoming very difficult. I talked too much, my God, now please grill me. No, I have plenty of questions and comments because there was a lot there. But one thing, I mean, you mentioned the word hurt being used a lot these days, and here the word violence is quite popular for speech deemed offensive. But using it, I mean, it trivializes actual violence in the way that seriously treating the Survivor's story on Curb Your Enthusiasm as a survivor in the same way as the Auschwitz survivor trivializes the Auschwitz experience. And then I was also struck by your example concerning obscenities, because this idea of—sorry, obscenity. Sorry, obscenities. No, sorry, I got the word. Okay, yeah. This idea of being unable to share obscenities makes it difficult to make friends these days, since these jokes or phrases which were once taken and understood as pretense are now prohibited. But in a certain way, it also strengthens old bonds because old friends are the only people you can speak like that with. And then the last thing that really comes to mind is returning to this discussion of permissiveness. And something I'm missing, but I'm sorry, maybe I'm just being obtuse, or maybe you could just make it more explicit, is how psychoanalysis explicitly figures into your analysis of this situation involving permissiveness turning into prohibition, where this idea of God and permissiveness arises out of distinctly psychoanalytical, like Lacanian, theory. This last question, if I may very briefly now, I will try to discipline myself. No, don't be disciplined. First, this last—no, no, what I mean is that Freud, when he advised Edoardo Weiss, dropped that Slovene, was not aware of his own great discovery, which is precisely that—you know, one idea we have to get rid of when we speak about the unconscious. And Freud wasn't always clear about it. The unconscious is not like Jung, Carl Gustav Jung, imagined it: a deep inner truth at which you should arrive so that then you learn about your true self. Unconscious is a domain of dirty inconsistent fantasies, desires, lies, fundamental lies and so on. Unconscious—the unconscious is not a deep truth about yourself. There is—I don't want to lose time, very briefly—there is another wonderful anecdote by Freud. He visited some—some—some caves in southern Slovenia called Škocjan Caves, which are terrifying. All this world beneath the earth—it’s terrifying. There is even a rumor that Dante visited that place, it’s a real rumor based on some letters, and he got the idea of hell from—from there. But then something miraculous happened to Freud. You know who—whom he met there in the deepest depth of hell? Karl Lueger, who was the German—sorry, Austrian—politician, Mayor of Vienna, the main influence of Hitler, extremely anti-Semitic, the proto-right-wing anti-Semitic populist. And the beauty in German language is that Lueger, "Lüge," means lie. He met the fundamental lie there. This is—this is—this is the deep message. From here I come to violence. You know, the basic lesson of psychoanalysis is that—violence is again a very ambiguous notion. For example, when we say "don't be violent, don't hurt people." But I'm sorry to say, and I'm not saying this just as a Freudian but as a Hegelian or whatever, for most of us, truth hurts. It’s extremely painful. So, yes, at least in theory, it’s another question how do you do this in daily life. In this sense, our duty as theorists is to hurt people. My witness will be here somebody whom even the liberals like, George Orwell, who said freedom of speech or press—I don’t know—is to be able, allowed to tell people what they don't want to hear. If they're not allowed to do this, don't speak about freedom. And I think that here the political correctness often misses this point. For example, I quoted this in one of my texts, how I don't know which university, maybe Cambridge or another college in the United Kingdom, trans people organized protest, protests because they invited a certain anthropologist, biologist, I don’t know, lady who was in practical matters totally pro-trans. No problem there. But just in theory, her point was that biology nonetheless plays a certain role. Your sexual identity is not simply socially constructed. Now, again, in practical political acts she was totally on the right side. And what shocked me is that the reaction of the trans community was not only to protest her giving a talk, but they even, at—for those two hours when this lady gave a talk, they opened up two, three safe rooms with—with cakes and tea so that those for whom it would be too traumatic to hear this... Why didn't they—I'm here an old-fashioned rational leftist—why didn't they go there and confront her with calm, rational argumentation? It can easily be said... I am not here, to avoid the misunderstanding, biologist determinist. Jacques Lacan put it clearly that a woman—biological woman—who was identified by birth as a woman, can well symbolically have a masculine identity, and the other way around, and there are possibilities of third transpositions and so on and so on. Yes, all this is totally open. I’m just saying don’t identify this position with simple personal feeling of free choice. Why not? Because you know there are external choices, like—sorry for vulgarity—you go to a—you go to a—to a—you go to a store to buy your dessert and then you say, "Oh my God, what should I choose? Strawberry cake or cheesecake or chocolate cake?" Yes, but your gender, sexual, whatever you want—I on purpose confuse them—identity is not such a choice. It is a
unknown
choice of what you are. It’s a much more radical choice. And these choices are usually unconscious. Not in any mythical irrational sense, but okay, I’m testing you, not you personally, an abstract you. If you fall really passionately in love, I claim it’s never a choice in the sense of: okay, let’s say—I'm sorry for this bias—you are hetero. Let’s say I see those ladies there, I like her legs, I like her laughter, I like her mind. Now let’s let me do a—let me see, she
choice of what you are. It’s a much more radical choice. And these choices are usually unconscious. Not in any mythical irrational sense, but okay, I’m testing you, not you personally, an abstract you. If you fall really passionately in love, I claim it’s never a choice in the sense of: okay, let’s say—I'm sorry for this bias—you are hetero. Let’s say I see those ladies there, I like her legs, I like her laughter, I like her mind. Now let’s let me do a—let me see, she
Slavoj Žižek
has two pluses, three, or she wins and so
has two pluses, three, or she wins and so
unknown
on and so on. That’s not love. I claim there is never a present moment when you fall in love. All of a sudden, you discover that you already are in love. The decision is free, subjective, but it happens retroactively. And my point is that such radical decisions are even mostly not experienced as free decisions but as fate. I spoke in Slovenia with some men who operated themselves surgically to become women and vice versa, blah, blah. And they didn't simply tell me the story of "Oh so happy, now I can be who I am." Yes, they—this was their story, but they emphasized the traumatic aspect of it. They told me they suffered terribly, you know, the procedure, surgical, is not so simple, it’s not "chop, chop, you are two hours under—under—under—under anesthesia and so on and then up, you awaken what
on and so on. That’s not love. I claim there is never a present moment when you fall in love. All of a sudden, you discover that you already are in love. The decision is free, subjective, but it happens retroactively. And my point is that such radical decisions are even mostly not experienced as free decisions but as fate. I spoke in Slovenia with some men who operated themselves surgically to become women and vice versa, blah, blah. And they didn't simply tell me the story of "Oh so happy, now I can be who I am." Yes, they—this was their story, but they emphasized the traumatic aspect of it. They told me they suffered terribly, you know, the procedure, surgical, is not so simple, it’s not "chop, chop, you are two hours under—under—under—under anesthesia and so on and then up, you awaken what
Slavoj Žižek
you want to be." It's a terribly painful process, many times it ends up in suicide and so on. No, no, this is not an argument against, I’m totally for it. What I’m just saying, that freedom at its highest has this form. Because if there is a thing that is free, it’s love. You fall in love freely, nobody can order you, "Fall in love." But precisely as such, when you discover that you are in love, it’s a fate. It can be painful, so it’s quite logical to say that love is for me an extremely violent thing. In the sense of disturbing, perturbing your everyday welfare. I—I often to provoke a little bit public quote this example. Let’s say you are a normal guy, even bisexual, whatever you want—my point is not sexuality here directly—and you are not in love. And you have a plan, you have a job if you are lucky, in the evening you meet with friends, you have one-night stands here and there, you make these, that experiments, blah, blah. And then you passionately fall in love. This is the most violent thing almost psychologically that can happen to you. You know what this means? You neglect friends, you neglect your job, you—your—all your daily life is thrown off balance. So such things are for me, under quotation marks, a good, good violence. There is something extremely violent in love. And it’s here—I don't want to be racist, West against East, because in the East you also have this—but here I see the difference in general terms between this kind of violent personal love, love for another person, and this general Buddhist love, you know, like this Buddha smile, I love all living beings and so on. No, this personal passionate love is extremely exclusive. No way out. And again, this is where psychoanalysis can help. What if what you unconsciously have chosen freely—it’s not biological fate—but let’s say what you somehow through complex unconscious processes have chosen as your identity and which you now experience as fate, fate in the sense of "my life is ruined, I cannot live without this, I have to do this"—what I’m saying is that such, precisely such I would almost say metaphysical dimension decision for love is getting, to put it very mildly, unfashionable today. Let me conclude, my God how much I talk, with an example which may amuse you. I was in Argentina years ago and I was told a wonderful story there. You know, the big decision in psychoanalysis is somebody comes to you and you have decide—to decide what is pathological or not. Like, are the symptoms of this person something that deserve full analysis or not? Here, of course, social norms, prejudices intervene. But they told me a wonderful detail in Argentina: that till, although they were always very promiscuous but nonetheless at basic, till like 1960s, if you, man or woman, were very promiscuous, jumping from one partner to the other, it was considered pathology. What you are afraid of, why are you jumping, it was to be analyzed. Do you know that today, I was told—which is a nice detail how the symbolic order changes—if you are totally faithful to your partner, it’s considered a pathological fixation. It has to be cured. "Let’s go to a psychoanalyst, you should do psychoanalysis to discover why are you there so—so many other women or men, why are you so—so fixated on that one?" and so on and so on, you know. So again, you see my—my position. Love can hurt, love is violence, but in some sense, things like love or the dedication to political work, to theory, without such things I don't think life is worth living. Here is the sad lesson of psychoanalysis. I talk too much, let’s go on, I will try to keep my word then and be short. No, please, please don't be any shorter. Also, don't apologize for the vulgarity. You mentioned before we started that you're not interested in psychoanalysis yourself, but I—I love the free association. I'm sure you've been told this many times, but you're probably a psychoanalyst’s dream. But you know what’s the paradox—sorry to interrupt you—the first lesson of Freud is that the term "free associations" is totally ironic. It means its exact opposite. Free associations means precisely that they are not really free. Because they come from the unconscious. The point—yeah, yeah, it’s precisely totally determined by your unconscious prejudices and so on and so on, you know. But you know—can I give you, it will amuse our readers. I learned now from a well-known Slovene theater director—she is a woman, but a big star in Germany—that she now staged Antigone in Munich. And she called me because she partially also used my version of my rewriting of Antigone. And she told me that at the beginning, when she met the actors, to avoid any misunderstanding, she asked each actor: how do you feel? How should I call you? He, she, they, and so on. And here things become ridiculous. You know what answer she got from all of them? "You should ask us this every day, because today I feel a man, tomorrow I may feel a woman" and so on. Okay, it’s nice, but I’m—I think that to—to—to—to reduce sexual identity to just the less—the least painful thing, what immediately gives you pleasure and so on and so on, is to make the whole thing ridicule. Isn't the best argument against this trans people who really change, even surgically, their identity? It's not about pleasure. They are ready to—to go through terrifying pain to do this. I just so—my problem is that terms like violence and hurting somebody are, I think, not—how should I put it—not instruments of truth, you know what I mean? They can be positive or negative. For example, when a people is oppressed, of course they have the right to become violent. Occupiers always—are always for peace. Why? Because peace means you can calmly dominate the occupied country and so on. And even hurt—at what level do you hurt somebody? I mean, the point is that it gets complex immediately the moment you introduce or take seriously Freud’s idea of the unconscious, of the divided subject and so on and so on. Returning for a moment to your involuntary associations, it’s—it’s often actually pretty difficult to interview people with very—with very active minds in this sense. But your—your associations, obviously they're very entertaining, but they're also, I mean, extremely insightful. And you mentioned Jordan Peterson earlier. I don't know if you heard this exchange between Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris about the nature of truth many years ago, where they were arguing about what truth is and it took an hour or two... No, I’m sorry, no. But even if it’s not scientific in some rigorous sense, everything you said about love earlier, a few minutes ago, it struck me as true in a very meaningful sense of the word, even if it’s not something that could be scientifically verified. But why—why should it be opposed to science too? Because people often characterize me as a—okay, because I speak the way I speak, as a crazy postmodernist and so on. No, I take science extremely seriously. I definitely don't think in a postmodern way—that’s the radical position of somebody like Michel Foucault and some others—that science, that each discourse, intersubjective exchange or space of meaning, has—produces its own truth and has its own truth criteria. So brought to the end, this logic means: why should scientific truth be universalized as the only true truth against, let’s say, religious superstitions or whatever, private wisdom? You have different discourses which define truth differently. But every notion of truth is bound to a certain discourse. I don’t agree with this. Whatever Chomsky would have thought—things about me here—I believe totally in scientific truth. And I am even writing now a new text on—on quantum physics. What I try to do there is not to do this nightmare of, you know, there is fashionable with some New Age guys to say quantum physics is—is—is confirming that there is no objective reality, that we... No, I want to read quantum physics in a strict materialist way. But nonetheless there is a problem here. Not a problem of non-materialism, but the problem of how we have to redefine—how should we call it—the all this wave oscillations, the quantum sphere. Yeah, the wave function. Yeah, the wave function. For example, as we all know, Niels Bohr totally avoided this problem, even prohibited it. As some critic wonderfully defined Bohr’s position: if you ask him, "but what is the nature of reality?", his answer is basically "shut up and calculate." Like, don't raise these questions. But today, especially I think it's extremely important with the three quantum physics experimentors who got—Alain Aspect and others—two others—who got the Nobel Prize. Now this—the—this—quantum communication faster than light between different points is empirically fully confirmed. Right, entanglement. Yeah, entanglement. So we cannot—we cannot avoid this question. We have to ask—or even with, sorry, with let’s say quantum computers. Obviously we can even at some level manipulate, use quantum processes. So the question is legitimate: what happens with our ordinary notion of reality? But I’m not saying it's just a subjective illusion and so on and so on. No, our notion of reality has to be changed precisely to save materialism, to redefine—it is a more radical materialism, although it may sound as if it is, let’s call it, materialism without matter. But I lost your thread. Your question was not this, was—ah, science. Yes, so I’m totally scientific here. I just—you know where as a philosopher—I hope this will say something to our public. I defend not even psychoanalysis, but just a deeper social analysis. My ordinary example—which I use often, let’s hope—probably you know it, let’s hope I'm not repeating myself too much for our public. Imagine—that we are two guys talking in Germany in '35 about Jews. Let’s say you are open towards—we are both Germans, but you are open towards Jews, you’re condemning anti-Semitism, and I am—I'm heroically taking this role, not that I'm anti-Semitic. This is where I think things get complicated. Not in the sense that it’s subjective, but—not in the postmodern sense, but in this simple sense. If we remain at the level of immediate facts, then I—I think we miss the true point of anti-Semitism. For example, me as anti-Semitic, I could easily say, but listen—and this was true in fact, not in '35, till '33—you know that percent of art critics in Germany were Jews. percent of lawyers were Jews and so on and so on. So I will say, doesn't nonetheless anti-Semitism have some ground? Then you can put the opposite arguments, you know. But my point here is that the moment you—if you truly want
you want to be." It's a terribly painful process, many times it ends up in suicide and so on. No, no, this is not an argument against, I’m totally for it. What I’m just saying, that freedom at its highest has this form. Because if there is a thing that is free, it’s love. You fall in love freely, nobody can order you, "Fall in love." But precisely as such, when you discover that you are in love, it’s a fate. It can be painful, so it’s quite logical to say that love is for me an extremely violent thing. In the sense of disturbing, perturbing your everyday welfare. I—I often to provoke a little bit public quote this example. Let’s say you are a normal guy, even bisexual, whatever you want—my point is not sexuality here directly—and you are not in love. And you have a plan, you have a job if you are lucky, in the evening you meet with friends, you have one-night stands here and there, you make these, that experiments, blah, blah. And then you passionately fall in love. This is the most violent thing almost psychologically that can happen to you. You know what this means? You neglect friends, you neglect your job, you—your—all your daily life is thrown off balance. So such things are for me, under quotation marks, a good, good violence. There is something extremely violent in love. And it’s here—I don't want to be racist, West against East, because in the East you also have this—but here I see the difference in general terms between this kind of violent personal love, love for another person, and this general Buddhist love, you know, like this Buddha smile, I love all living beings and so on. No, this personal passionate love is extremely exclusive. No way out. And again, this is where psychoanalysis can help. What if what you unconsciously have chosen freely—it’s not biological fate—but let’s say what you somehow through complex unconscious processes have chosen as your identity and which you now experience as fate, fate in the sense of "my life is ruined, I cannot live without this, I have to do this"—what I’m saying is that such, precisely such I would almost say metaphysical dimension decision for love is getting, to put it very mildly, unfashionable today. Let me conclude, my God how much I talk, with an example which may amuse you. I was in Argentina years ago and I was told a wonderful story there. You know, the big decision in psychoanalysis is somebody comes to you and you have decide—to decide what is pathological or not. Like, are the symptoms of this person something that deserve full analysis or not? Here, of course, social norms, prejudices intervene. But they told me a wonderful detail in Argentina: that till, although they were always very promiscuous but nonetheless at basic, till like 1960s, if you, man or woman, were very promiscuous, jumping from one partner to the other, it was considered pathology. What you are afraid of, why are you jumping, it was to be analyzed. Do you know that today, I was told—which is a nice detail how the symbolic order changes—if you are totally faithful to your partner, it’s considered a pathological fixation. It has to be cured. "Let’s go to a psychoanalyst, you should do psychoanalysis to discover why are you there so—so many other women or men, why are you so—so fixated on that one?" and so on and so on, you know. So again, you see my—my position. Love can hurt, love is violence, but in some sense, things like love or the dedication to political work, to theory, without such things I don't think life is worth living. Here is the sad lesson of psychoanalysis. I talk too much, let’s go on, I will try to keep my word then and be short. No, please, please don't be any shorter. Also, don't apologize for the vulgarity. You mentioned before we started that you're not interested in psychoanalysis yourself, but I—I love the free association. I'm sure you've been told this many times, but you're probably a psychoanalyst’s dream. But you know what’s the paradox—sorry to interrupt you—the first lesson of Freud is that the term "free associations" is totally ironic. It means its exact opposite. Free associations means precisely that they are not really free. Because they come from the unconscious. The point—yeah, yeah, it’s precisely totally determined by your unconscious prejudices and so on and so on, you know. But you know—can I give you, it will amuse our readers. I learned now from a well-known Slovene theater director—she is a woman, but a big star in Germany—that she now staged Antigone in Munich. And she called me because she partially also used my version of my rewriting of Antigone. And she told me that at the beginning, when she met the actors, to avoid any misunderstanding, she asked each actor: how do you feel? How should I call you? He, she, they, and so on. And here things become ridiculous. You know what answer she got from all of them? "You should ask us this every day, because today I feel a man, tomorrow I may feel a woman" and so on. Okay, it’s nice, but I’m—I think that to—to—to—to reduce sexual identity to just the less—the least painful thing, what immediately gives you pleasure and so on and so on, is to make the whole thing ridicule. Isn't the best argument against this trans people who really change, even surgically, their identity? It's not about pleasure. They are ready to—to go through terrifying pain to do this. I just so—my problem is that terms like violence and hurting somebody are, I think, not—how should I put it—not instruments of truth, you know what I mean? They can be positive or negative. For example, when a people is oppressed, of course they have the right to become violent. Occupiers always—are always for peace. Why? Because peace means you can calmly dominate the occupied country and so on. And even hurt—at what level do you hurt somebody? I mean, the point is that it gets complex immediately the moment you introduce or take seriously Freud’s idea of the unconscious, of the divided subject and so on and so on. Returning for a moment to your involuntary associations, it’s—it’s often actually pretty difficult to interview people with very—with very active minds in this sense. But your—your associations, obviously they're very entertaining, but they're also, I mean, extremely insightful. And you mentioned Jordan Peterson earlier. I don't know if you heard this exchange between Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris about the nature of truth many years ago, where they were arguing about what truth is and it took an hour or two... No, I’m sorry, no. But even if it’s not scientific in some rigorous sense, everything you said about love earlier, a few minutes ago, it struck me as true in a very meaningful sense of the word, even if it’s not something that could be scientifically verified. But why—why should it be opposed to science too? Because people often characterize me as a—okay, because I speak the way I speak, as a crazy postmodernist and so on. No, I take science extremely seriously. I definitely don't think in a postmodern way—that’s the radical position of somebody like Michel Foucault and some others—that science, that each discourse, intersubjective exchange or space of meaning, has—produces its own truth and has its own truth criteria. So brought to the end, this logic means: why should scientific truth be universalized as the only true truth against, let’s say, religious superstitions or whatever, private wisdom? You have different discourses which define truth differently. But every notion of truth is bound to a certain discourse. I don’t agree with this. Whatever Chomsky would have thought—things about me here—I believe totally in scientific truth. And I am even writing now a new text on—on quantum physics. What I try to do there is not to do this nightmare of, you know, there is fashionable with some New Age guys to say quantum physics is—is—is confirming that there is no objective reality, that we... No, I want to read quantum physics in a strict materialist way. But nonetheless there is a problem here. Not a problem of non-materialism, but the problem of how we have to redefine—how should we call it—the all this wave oscillations, the quantum sphere. Yeah, the wave function. Yeah, the wave function. For example, as we all know, Niels Bohr totally avoided this problem, even prohibited it. As some critic wonderfully defined Bohr’s position: if you ask him, "but what is the nature of reality?", his answer is basically "shut up and calculate." Like, don't raise these questions. But today, especially I think it's extremely important with the three quantum physics experimentors who got—Alain Aspect and others—two others—who got the Nobel Prize. Now this—the—this—quantum communication faster than light between different points is empirically fully confirmed. Right, entanglement. Yeah, entanglement. So we cannot—we cannot avoid this question. We have to ask—or even with, sorry, with let’s say quantum computers. Obviously we can even at some level manipulate, use quantum processes. So the question is legitimate: what happens with our ordinary notion of reality? But I’m not saying it's just a subjective illusion and so on and so on. No, our notion of reality has to be changed precisely to save materialism, to redefine—it is a more radical materialism, although it may sound as if it is, let’s call it, materialism without matter. But I lost your thread. Your question was not this, was—ah, science. Yes, so I’m totally scientific here. I just—you know where as a philosopher—I hope this will say something to our public. I defend not even psychoanalysis, but just a deeper social analysis. My ordinary example—which I use often, let’s hope—probably you know it, let’s hope I'm not repeating myself too much for our public. Imagine—that we are two guys talking in Germany in '35 about Jews. Let’s say you are open towards—we are both Germans, but you are open towards Jews, you’re condemning anti-Semitism, and I am—I'm heroically taking this role, not that I'm anti-Semitic. This is where I think things get complicated. Not in the sense that it’s subjective, but—not in the postmodern sense, but in this simple sense. If we remain at the level of immediate facts, then I—I think we miss the true point of anti-Semitism. For example, me as anti-Semitic, I could easily say, but listen—and this was true in fact, not in '35, till '33—you know that percent of art critics in Germany were Jews. percent of lawyers were Jews and so on and so on. So I will say, doesn't nonetheless anti-Semitism have some ground? Then you can put the opposite arguments, you know. But my point here is that the moment you—if you truly want
unknown
to be anti-anti-Semitic—the moment you accept this logic just about the factual truth of what we are debating, you have already sold your—your soul to the devil. Because I claim the true question is not why am I or the Nazis in general anti-Semitic, the true question is: why do I as
to be anti-anti-Semitic—the moment you accept this logic just about the factual truth of what we are debating, you have already sold your—your soul to the devil. Because I claim the true question is not why am I or the Nazis in general anti-Semitic, the true question is: why do I as
Slavoj Žižek
a Nazi—I'm sure some idiot will now quote this and claim that I confessed publicly that I'm a Nazi—It’s going to be on your Wikipedia page—Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why does a Nazi so desperately need the figure of the Jew to maintain his worldview, his system? And here, I believe, it’s not as simple as that in the basic Marxist thesis. The fundamental premise of fascism is that society is in itself a harmonious body where different parts, which means different social groups, different social classes, harmoniously cooperate. And that then—antagonism, class struggle is introduced by an external intruder. In this case, Jews. So the point is to maintain this—that’s why they need a Jew, to explain how come that we live in a society full of antagonisms. The answer is: because of the Jews. And this was Hitler’s big—okay, it was before him anti-Semitism, but nonetheless Hitler’s big rhetorical trick. In late '20s when the crisis exploded in Germany, it was horrible for ordinary conservative people. They lost their money for retirement, they lost their jobs, they saw society as penetrated by modern art which meant nothing to them, by sexual promiscuity and so on. And Hitler came and provided a simple answer: a plot. In two senses: plot like complot, Jewish plot, and plot like plot, a consistent narrative. You listen to Hitler and you say, "Oh my God, now things are clear to me." So you see what I’m saying, to go to the end. I quote Lacan, Jacques Lacan, who somewhere says something simple but very deep. If I’m a husband and have a wife, and if I am pathologically jealous of her, like "Oh my God, is she sleeping with other men?" and so on. My jealousy is pathological. That's a nice point. Even if my wife is really sleeping with other men. And in this sense, I’m not saying that the accusations against Jews are true. I'm just saying this is not—this is not the core of the matter. The core is: why do Jews need the figure of the Jew? And again, this is what we always should ask, especially with violent religious fundamentalisms. What are they escaping from? It’s not enough again to prove that
a Nazi—I'm sure some idiot will now quote this and claim that I confessed publicly that I'm a Nazi—It’s going to be on your Wikipedia page—Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why does a Nazi so desperately need the figure of the Jew to maintain his worldview, his system? And here, I believe, it’s not as simple as that in the basic Marxist thesis. The fundamental premise of fascism is that society is in itself a harmonious body where different parts, which means different social groups, different social classes, harmoniously cooperate. And that then—antagonism, class struggle is introduced by an external intruder. In this case, Jews. So the point is to maintain this—that’s why they need a Jew, to explain how come that we live in a society full of antagonisms. The answer is: because of the Jews. And this was Hitler’s big—okay, it was before him anti-Semitism, but nonetheless Hitler’s big rhetorical trick. In late '20s when the crisis exploded in Germany, it was horrible for ordinary conservative people. They lost their money for retirement, they lost their jobs, they saw society as penetrated by modern art which meant nothing to them, by sexual promiscuity and so on. And Hitler came and provided a simple answer: a plot. In two senses: plot like complot, Jewish plot, and plot like plot, a consistent narrative. You listen to Hitler and you say, "Oh my God, now things are clear to me." So you see what I’m saying, to go to the end. I quote Lacan, Jacques Lacan, who somewhere says something simple but very deep. If I’m a husband and have a wife, and if I am pathologically jealous of her, like "Oh my God, is she sleeping with other men?" and so on. My jealousy is pathological. That's a nice point. Even if my wife is really sleeping with other men. And in this sense, I’m not saying that the accusations against Jews are true. I'm just saying this is not—this is not the core of the matter. The core is: why do Jews need the figure of the Jew? And again, this is what we always should ask, especially with violent religious fundamentalisms. What are they escaping from? It’s not enough again to prove that
unknown
they're factually wrong. Because if—I—I had once, it was an incredible experience, a debate with an anti-Semitic guy. Okay, we ended total enemies. But—uh—uh—I asked him a simple question: but you probably know some Jews, aren't they—most of them at least, as with many people, some of them, many of them are quite nice normal people, what’s your problem? You know he answered me, that’s the beauty of racist logic: "Yes, because the essence of the Jews is that they're not only what they are, greedy evil, but they know how to mask their evil with superficial kindness." And this, which should be an argument against anti-Semitism, for a true anti-Semite this is what makes them even more dangerous, you know. And this—this logic today is
they're factually wrong. Because if—I—I had once, it was an incredible experience, a debate with an anti-Semitic guy. Okay, we ended total enemies. But—uh—uh—I asked him a simple question: but you probably know some Jews, aren't they—most of them at least, as with many people, some of them, many of them are quite nice normal people, what’s your problem? You know he answered me, that’s the beauty of racist logic: "Yes, because the essence of the Jews is that they're not only what they are, greedy evil, but they know how to mask their evil with superficial kindness." And this, which should be an argument against anti-Semitism, for a true anti-Semite this is what makes them even more dangerous, you know. And this—this logic today is
Slavoj Žižek
exploding and we have to clarify. Why? Can I just add, maybe it will be interesting to some readers, that’s why what makes me really sad today are what I call unholy alliances. You know what I mean by this, like where—and I believe here our common sense, I’m on the side—what following our common sense should be incompatible, they bring it together. What do I mean by this? To give you an extreme example which made me infinitely sad. Did—was it in your media? About two months ago I think, Uganda, the African country, the parliament there voted with one or two vote—votes against, large majority voted to criminalize homosexuality. But not just, you know, one year of prison. If you are caught in homosexual act, it’s—the only choice is—uh—life imprisonment or death penalty. Okay, crazy you say. But what made me so sad is that, you know how they justified this? With anti-colonialism. They said: you have the choice, European decadent imperialist colonizing way of life or our authentic African way of life. And it’s the same—it makes me so infinitely sad—I don't know how it is in the United States, but it is, I think, with Ukraine. My God, it's a miracle what happens there. I know, I know leftists who are volunteers now on the front—front, on the Ukrainian side. It's an incredible example of true popular war. It's not just the army, it’s ordinary people organizing local hospitals and so on and so on. But nonetheless, many leftists claim it’s not so simple, it serves NATO—NATO arms industry, Russia was provoked and so on and so on. This makes me so sad. It’s another of these unholy alliances. And it hurts me, why? Because Putin is exploiting this. In many third world countries, precisely because Putin presents the—the war as a struggle against Western colonization, they identify with Putin. It’s another unholy alliance. And that’s what really makes me pessimist today. But again, to understand this mechanism, again I would say psychoanalysis is needed. Not that these unholy alliances and current political events aren’t of the utmost importance, but I want to go back to something you said earlier because I think it’s of immense philosophical importance and something that I don’t quite understand because I’m much more well-versed in analytic compared to continental philosophy. But—but sorry to interrupt you, but do you know that there are many analytic philosophers whom I—I quoted them a lot, I admire them a lot? For example, Saul Kripke, now something went wrong with him, disappeared, but Naming and Necessity was one of the formative books of my youth. Then another name, it may surprise you. I was in contact with him, but then he was ill, he died—it may surprise you—Donald Davidson, of all people. Then another example, I take—you know that the British guy, Bernard Williams, who wrote a book—wonderful book called Moral Luck. Very deep insight of the temporality, how it’s not simply I do something, up to a point it will be retroactively decided was what I did moral or not. It gets more complicated, I know, but—so again, let me just... But you know what I will now ask you? No, no, no, hold on, hold on, this is important. No, no, no, rhetorically, you don't have to answer. I—I lost a little bit of a contact in the last couple of years like I followed that, let's call it, pro-continental philosophy trend in analytic philosophy, even in Hegel studies. For example, what is specific of a guy like—like—like Robert Brandom is that his reading of Hegel—I don't agree with it, but it’s a very well-elaborated, beautiful clear thinking. It’s obviously up to a point based on analytic language philosophy, on analytic thinking and so on. So don’t portray me as an opponent of analytic philosophy. And that is not at all what I was doing. What I was saying is that I personally, even though I'm quite interested in continental philosophy, but I don't know much about it, which is the importance of this question. But so you—you spoke a lot about quantum theory and materialism on the one hand, but then on the other hand, Hegel along with Lacan is one of your huge heroes. And you’ve mentioned that German idealism is one of the most important philosophical movements, you think that contemporary philosophy really needs to reclaim it. But I don't totally understand how these two things... But isn't the irony that—sorry, that—that—that Robert Brandom is in some sense reclaiming Hegel for some kind of—not traditional analytic philosophy, if you put it in this way? That was for me almost an orgasmic moment when... And I will go even further. In United States, you know who is usually in the history of philosophy considered the zero point, the true father, the beginning of analytic philosophy is Charles Sanders Peirce, no? I would have said Frege, but I mean they’re in the same vein. No, Frege is European and it’s different, but you know that Peirce was a Hegelian? He thought he was a Hegelian. And what I try to do in my reading of Hegel is precisely dispel, overthrow this big misunderstandings about Hegel as a stupid absolute idealist who thought he knew everything. I think, to put it as provocatively as possible, that Hegel is more materialist than Marx himself. Why? Because in Marx you still have this, let’s call it teleology: history moves in a certain direction, we may screw it up, but like history moves towards some kind of socialism, communism. And then even Marxists who are not determinists usually quote Rosa Luxemburg, who said, "The future will be socialism or barbarism." Now, to this the 20th century gave us a perfect answer with Stalinism. What if it can be both, barbarism and socialism? You know. So what I’m saying is that also based on analytic philosophy, I try to rehabilitate—which may sound crazy—a Hegel which is much more even relativist and so on. I will give you one proof. Everybody likes to quote that Hegel—from—preface, I think, not introduction to his Philosophy of Right, when he says philosophy is like the Owl of Minerva, it takes off at the end of the day. And Hegel explains what he means by this. He says philosophy is a child of its time, it can only grasp an epoch when its time is running out. When a form of life, social form, is under threat, disappearing, philosophy from this distance can grasp it. But—that’s the surprise—Hegel absolutely prohibits any speculations about future. Hegel says about future: this is not a topic of philosophy, we cannot say anything. Although incidentally when he made here and there empirical points about future, he was uncannily correct. For example, in the same—no, sorry, yeah, introduction to the philosophy of history, you know when he speaks about America, United States, and about Russia. You know what Hegel says? It’s not yet their time, the next century, 20th, Hegel wrote this in will be theirs, Russian and American. So empirically he was not an idiot. You know in what sense is Hegel for me the ultimate thinker of contingency? For him teleology, if you read him closely, doesn't predetermine development. It’s more like once a thing happens, it retroactively becomes necessary. I’m not speaking about magic here, but it retroactively creates a narrative of its own necessity. And I think Hegel is consciously doing this. History is for him not necessary. He speaks about the progress of the spirit towards freedom, but this is at his point of history, French Revolution and so on. If you read it from that experience, you can say it all moves towards this. But in some sense, although it gets more ambiguous, everybody is doing this. So again, my reading of Hegel is totally crazy: it’s the great thinker of contingency for whom future is totally open. Hegel has horror of any—Hegel would have been horrified by this usual, not even Marxist, Marxist, Marxist is more open, Marxist logic of, you know, there are stages of history and now we are in a passage from—from capitalism to socialism, whatever. No, Hegel would have liked what people—I'm not saying I percent agree with them, but they are touching something. You know that Yanis Varoufakis, for instance, and Jodi Dean and others, claim that—and I love this theory, I’m not qualified enough to say it’s true, but it—that today capitalism as we know it, liberal global capitalism, is already disappearing and a new form of—of—of neo-feudalism is entering. That persons like Jeff Bezos and so on, this is no longer profit. We are—they collectivize some of our commons, shared space, and we are paying rent to them. So I like this theory which then amounts to the fact that we shouldn't be abstractly anti-capitalist, because—sorry for use this term for which many leftists will lynch me—but creative, small capitalists are also under threat. And I’m not afraid of proposing a kind of a pact against these new oligarchs with this small creative capitalists, whatever, you know. So you see this is Hegelianism for me: future is radically open. We don't know what will happen. But let’s say that now there will be—hope not—a third world war, real one. No doubt then history will be—histories will be written claiming: "Can't you see it was all pointing towards this?" Let’s say it will end up like the Cold War is—no doubt histories will be written saying: "It was like just Cold War, it was all a game, both sides were aware they shouldn't push it too much" and so on and so on. I—and now I will make a philosophical point: I
exploding and we have to clarify. Why? Can I just add, maybe it will be interesting to some readers, that’s why what makes me really sad today are what I call unholy alliances. You know what I mean by this, like where—and I believe here our common sense, I’m on the side—what following our common sense should be incompatible, they bring it together. What do I mean by this? To give you an extreme example which made me infinitely sad. Did—was it in your media? About two months ago I think, Uganda, the African country, the parliament there voted with one or two vote—votes against, large majority voted to criminalize homosexuality. But not just, you know, one year of prison. If you are caught in homosexual act, it’s—the only choice is—uh—life imprisonment or death penalty. Okay, crazy you say. But what made me so sad is that, you know how they justified this? With anti-colonialism. They said: you have the choice, European decadent imperialist colonizing way of life or our authentic African way of life. And it’s the same—it makes me so infinitely sad—I don't know how it is in the United States, but it is, I think, with Ukraine. My God, it's a miracle what happens there. I know, I know leftists who are volunteers now on the front—front, on the Ukrainian side. It's an incredible example of true popular war. It's not just the army, it’s ordinary people organizing local hospitals and so on and so on. But nonetheless, many leftists claim it’s not so simple, it serves NATO—NATO arms industry, Russia was provoked and so on and so on. This makes me so sad. It’s another of these unholy alliances. And it hurts me, why? Because Putin is exploiting this. In many third world countries, precisely because Putin presents the—the war as a struggle against Western colonization, they identify with Putin. It’s another unholy alliance. And that’s what really makes me pessimist today. But again, to understand this mechanism, again I would say psychoanalysis is needed. Not that these unholy alliances and current political events aren’t of the utmost importance, but I want to go back to something you said earlier because I think it’s of immense philosophical importance and something that I don’t quite understand because I’m much more well-versed in analytic compared to continental philosophy. But—but sorry to interrupt you, but do you know that there are many analytic philosophers whom I—I quoted them a lot, I admire them a lot? For example, Saul Kripke, now something went wrong with him, disappeared, but Naming and Necessity was one of the formative books of my youth. Then another name, it may surprise you. I was in contact with him, but then he was ill, he died—it may surprise you—Donald Davidson, of all people. Then another example, I take—you know that the British guy, Bernard Williams, who wrote a book—wonderful book called Moral Luck. Very deep insight of the temporality, how it’s not simply I do something, up to a point it will be retroactively decided was what I did moral or not. It gets more complicated, I know, but—so again, let me just... But you know what I will now ask you? No, no, no, hold on, hold on, this is important. No, no, no, rhetorically, you don't have to answer. I—I lost a little bit of a contact in the last couple of years like I followed that, let's call it, pro-continental philosophy trend in analytic philosophy, even in Hegel studies. For example, what is specific of a guy like—like—like Robert Brandom is that his reading of Hegel—I don't agree with it, but it’s a very well-elaborated, beautiful clear thinking. It’s obviously up to a point based on analytic language philosophy, on analytic thinking and so on. So don’t portray me as an opponent of analytic philosophy. And that is not at all what I was doing. What I was saying is that I personally, even though I'm quite interested in continental philosophy, but I don't know much about it, which is the importance of this question. But so you—you spoke a lot about quantum theory and materialism on the one hand, but then on the other hand, Hegel along with Lacan is one of your huge heroes. And you’ve mentioned that German idealism is one of the most important philosophical movements, you think that contemporary philosophy really needs to reclaim it. But I don't totally understand how these two things... But isn't the irony that—sorry, that—that—that Robert Brandom is in some sense reclaiming Hegel for some kind of—not traditional analytic philosophy, if you put it in this way? That was for me almost an orgasmic moment when... And I will go even further. In United States, you know who is usually in the history of philosophy considered the zero point, the true father, the beginning of analytic philosophy is Charles Sanders Peirce, no? I would have said Frege, but I mean they’re in the same vein. No, Frege is European and it’s different, but you know that Peirce was a Hegelian? He thought he was a Hegelian. And what I try to do in my reading of Hegel is precisely dispel, overthrow this big misunderstandings about Hegel as a stupid absolute idealist who thought he knew everything. I think, to put it as provocatively as possible, that Hegel is more materialist than Marx himself. Why? Because in Marx you still have this, let’s call it teleology: history moves in a certain direction, we may screw it up, but like history moves towards some kind of socialism, communism. And then even Marxists who are not determinists usually quote Rosa Luxemburg, who said, "The future will be socialism or barbarism." Now, to this the 20th century gave us a perfect answer with Stalinism. What if it can be both, barbarism and socialism? You know. So what I’m saying is that also based on analytic philosophy, I try to rehabilitate—which may sound crazy—a Hegel which is much more even relativist and so on. I will give you one proof. Everybody likes to quote that Hegel—from—preface, I think, not introduction to his Philosophy of Right, when he says philosophy is like the Owl of Minerva, it takes off at the end of the day. And Hegel explains what he means by this. He says philosophy is a child of its time, it can only grasp an epoch when its time is running out. When a form of life, social form, is under threat, disappearing, philosophy from this distance can grasp it. But—that’s the surprise—Hegel absolutely prohibits any speculations about future. Hegel says about future: this is not a topic of philosophy, we cannot say anything. Although incidentally when he made here and there empirical points about future, he was uncannily correct. For example, in the same—no, sorry, yeah, introduction to the philosophy of history, you know when he speaks about America, United States, and about Russia. You know what Hegel says? It’s not yet their time, the next century, 20th, Hegel wrote this in will be theirs, Russian and American. So empirically he was not an idiot. You know in what sense is Hegel for me the ultimate thinker of contingency? For him teleology, if you read him closely, doesn't predetermine development. It’s more like once a thing happens, it retroactively becomes necessary. I’m not speaking about magic here, but it retroactively creates a narrative of its own necessity. And I think Hegel is consciously doing this. History is for him not necessary. He speaks about the progress of the spirit towards freedom, but this is at his point of history, French Revolution and so on. If you read it from that experience, you can say it all moves towards this. But in some sense, although it gets more ambiguous, everybody is doing this. So again, my reading of Hegel is totally crazy: it’s the great thinker of contingency for whom future is totally open. Hegel has horror of any—Hegel would have been horrified by this usual, not even Marxist, Marxist, Marxist is more open, Marxist logic of, you know, there are stages of history and now we are in a passage from—from capitalism to socialism, whatever. No, Hegel would have liked what people—I'm not saying I percent agree with them, but they are touching something. You know that Yanis Varoufakis, for instance, and Jodi Dean and others, claim that—and I love this theory, I’m not qualified enough to say it’s true, but it—that today capitalism as we know it, liberal global capitalism, is already disappearing and a new form of—of—of neo-feudalism is entering. That persons like Jeff Bezos and so on, this is no longer profit. We are—they collectivize some of our commons, shared space, and we are paying rent to them. So I like this theory which then amounts to the fact that we shouldn't be abstractly anti-capitalist, because—sorry for use this term for which many leftists will lynch me—but creative, small capitalists are also under threat. And I’m not afraid of proposing a kind of a pact against these new oligarchs with this small creative capitalists, whatever, you know. So you see this is Hegelianism for me: future is radically open. We don't know what will happen. But let’s say that now there will be—hope not—a third world war, real one. No doubt then history will be—histories will be written claiming: "Can't you see it was all pointing towards this?" Let’s say it will end up like the Cold War is—no doubt histories will be written saying: "It was like just Cold War, it was all a game, both sides were aware they shouldn't push it too much" and so on and so on. I—and now I will make a philosophical point: I
unknown
think that I would even elevate this to my—let’s call it—not just in the space of meaning, even nature with quantum theory: ontological openness, you know. Like, for example, I always say what always surprises me is that here I am the true multiculturalist, not the political correct one. I like how
think that I would even elevate this to my—let’s call it—not just in the space of meaning, even nature with quantum theory: ontological openness, you know. Like, for example, I always say what always surprises me is that here I am the true multiculturalist, not the political correct one. I like how
Slavoj Žižek
often works of art which refer to another culture from long time ago. Like, for example, take Shakespeare. I often repeat this point: for me, the best film version of Hamlet is—you know that in Akira Kurosawa did Hamlet, wonderful title he gave: "Only Bad People Can Sleep Well," a wonderful title, where Toshiro Mifune, of all guys, plays Hamlet, a student who returns from America from the studies and his uncle married his mother, but the same story. And so for me, the true question is not what Shakespeare really meant. What if he didn't know what he meant? What if his work is as to its meaning antagonistic and immanently open, so that what if this historicist question—"Oh to understand Shakespeare you have to know all the details about Elizabethan England and so on"—is wrong. Maybe with a distance we can better understand Shakespeare than Shakespeare understood himself. Why? Because history is—do you know my story, just to conclude—from an introduction—I often use it—from an introduction to some introduction to modern philosophy? It’s a wonderful way to explain quantum physics, which is why I still in an old-fashioned way love it. He takes the example from
often works of art which refer to another culture from long time ago. Like, for example, take Shakespeare. I often repeat this point: for me, the best film version of Hamlet is—you know that in Akira Kurosawa did Hamlet, wonderful title he gave: "Only Bad People Can Sleep Well," a wonderful title, where Toshiro Mifune, of all guys, plays Hamlet, a student who returns from America from the studies and his uncle married his mother, but the same story. And so for me, the true question is not what Shakespeare really meant. What if he didn't know what he meant? What if his work is as to its meaning antagonistic and immanently open, so that what if this historicist question—"Oh to understand Shakespeare you have to know all the details about Elizabethan England and so on"—is wrong. Maybe with a distance we can better understand Shakespeare than Shakespeare understood himself. Why? Because history is—do you know my story, just to conclude—from an introduction—I often use it—from an introduction to some introduction to modern philosophy? It’s a wonderful way to explain quantum physics, which is why I still in an old-fashioned way love it. He takes the example from
unknown
video games and says in video games you don't have complete reality. Like you are in a game, you are in a valley doing fights whatever shooting stupid things, then above there are hills where you see some trees. But you cannot go close to the tree and analyze it in detail because that's not programmed, you know. The program was too lazy to do it, blah, blah. Okay, my totally crazy idea is that in some sense the lesson of
video games and says in video games you don't have complete reality. Like you are in a game, you are in a valley doing fights whatever shooting stupid things, then above there are hills where you see some trees. But you cannot go close to the tree and analyze it in detail because that's not programmed, you know. The program was too lazy to do it, blah, blah. Okay, my totally crazy idea is that in some sense the lesson of
Slavoj Žižek
quantum physics is that's how our reality is structured. It's not completely programmed. It's not the reality is out there, but it's again, it's open, it's ontologically open, it’s ontologically incomplete. Now I'm not the stupid idealist who grounds the notion of freedom in this. Because wait a minute, freedom is not the same as contingency, you know. Freedom is a form of necessity. If you say—but even that is not true through chance, it’s determined. If you say, "I don't want to decide it, I will leave it to chance," and you throw a coin in the air and so on, this is contingency. Even if it’s not, it can be a joke. But what I’m saying is that freedom is its own form of necessity, with its own paradoxes and so on. But I like this idea of reality which is incomplete in itself. So that you cannot even clearly distinguish between Shakespeare in—himself, Shakespeare’s work in itself, and our readings. No, in some way our readings bring to the end Shakespeare’s work. If you provide a convincing reading of Hamlet, it’s—it goes further than Shakespeare, but not simply from the outside because it fills in what is lacking, what was left open in Shakespeare himself. I—I really like this idea of ontological openness and reality not being completely programmed. It really—it runs head-on into our intuitions, or the intuition of the proverbial scientist, that the world is out there and complete. Yeah, yeah, because here I am not opposed to—opposed to stupid scientists who think that the incompleteness means just the limitation of our knowledge. Eh, what if reality is in itself incomplete? You know which I most like in my obscenity? The—the theological version of this, which is wonderful. Of this paradox, which is this one: why do we have the quantum sphere where things are not yet ontologically fixed, but wave oscillations and so on? Because God created the world for us. And when he was programming it, he thought we will never be able to move beyond the atom. So why should God lose time programming all the quantum details when he... but now, as they say, as you say I think in English, "We—we caught God with his pants down," as it were, you know. We got him! And this is now nice philosophical point, it’s from my new book that I’m now finishing. So not only is for me quantum physics in this incompleteness not subjectivist or theological, a mind the observer creates reality, but it’s more materialist. In what sense? Einstein himself in his eternal polemics with Niels Bohr, you know, insisted that there must be totally determined—we know the story—objective reality and so on, and he uses the word there "divine." He says, "This is something like divine dimension, this harmony of..." God is not playing dice. Yeah, and all that. But the lesson of quantum physics is—is not that God is deceiving us, but that God—which is for me simply I'm not—I'm not a believer—the knowledge embodied in our tradition, our common image of reality, is in itself deceived. Like there is more in reality, there are things that do not fit our ordinary everyday perception. All science is about this. Real modern science, that's why I'm for it, beginning with Galileo. I think that till Galileo, science was basically bringing up the notion more or less of our everyday concepts, or philosophy, like Aristotle: you know heavy objects fall down and so on, kind of everyday ontology. Then the first big break was with I think it was Galileo, no? Who put this idea that an object, if it moves in space without external influence, it’s not at peace, but it moves with the same velocity in the same direction and so on. So that the zero state, the—the common sense pre-scientific version is that objects are intrinsically at peace. And then you need something, at least mechanical object, with life it's get complicated. And then we go on and on, Einstein, and then quantum physics, we get an image—it’s not a good term, even image—of reality which simply cannot be translated into our everyday experience of reality. That’s for me something incredible about science. So again, science is absolutely not any kind of just one discourse among the others and so on and so on. It is in some sense the greatest thing we have. But I’d still like to tie this back to Hegel. And so you mentioned earlier Bohr—I mean you've mentioned him a number of times. But earlier you mentioned his being associated with this idea of "shut up and calculate." But he’s also associated with the Copenhagen interpretation, though this is—uh—a bit—a bit fuzzy, where measurement and other phenomena are observer-dependent. And I’m wondering if this is the connection to Hegel and idealism that interests you, where the objects in the world are—uh—inherently subject-dependent. Yeah, I know what you are here saying, but you know what is interesting to note is first that if you are looking—I know a lot about Bohr—if you are looking at an influence there, it’s Kant. Bohr among classical thinkers, not just philosophers, Bohr liked Kant and in theology Kierkegaard. These were his true loves, no? And it's obvious why Kant, because by Kant you also have this subjective constitution of reality and so on. But I—I think that we should make with Bohr another Hegelian twist, which means not... You know what Hegel does with Kant is not simply to say, "Oh, there is reality out there, Kant thought we cannot get at it, it's noümenal thing in itself, but I, Hegel, absolute knowing, I can." No, Hegel's point is something different. It is that what if—because Kant's points are antinomies. If we try to understand reality in itself, we get caught in antinomies, that is to say radical insolvable contradictions. Hegel's point is rather: why should contradictions, antinomies, be only subjective? Why don't we displace this limit into the thing itself? What if the thing in itself is in some sense contradictory? This doesn't mean that there are things out there which are contradictory. Hegel's point would have been another one, and Bohr knows it, that the reason of this—uh—relying on measurement and so on is precisely because we are part of the measured reality. We are not outside. This is a very deep philosophical insight of Niels Bohr. He is not saying "we are outside the world," or "the world is out there, a thing in itself, we cannot get at it." No, all is complicated because we are part of the world. And precisely because we are part of the world, we cannot pretend that we are not and look at the world from outside. So now I'm getting tired to conclude. May I say—you use it or not, whatever you want—my favorite dirty joke, but it's not vulgar, it’s even a little bit pro-feminist, nobody will be offended, I hope so, you never know today. I read recently a wonderful small vulgar joke about a wife while her husband is out drinking and
quantum physics is that's how our reality is structured. It's not completely programmed. It's not the reality is out there, but it's again, it's open, it's ontologically open, it’s ontologically incomplete. Now I'm not the stupid idealist who grounds the notion of freedom in this. Because wait a minute, freedom is not the same as contingency, you know. Freedom is a form of necessity. If you say—but even that is not true through chance, it’s determined. If you say, "I don't want to decide it, I will leave it to chance," and you throw a coin in the air and so on, this is contingency. Even if it’s not, it can be a joke. But what I’m saying is that freedom is its own form of necessity, with its own paradoxes and so on. But I like this idea of reality which is incomplete in itself. So that you cannot even clearly distinguish between Shakespeare in—himself, Shakespeare’s work in itself, and our readings. No, in some way our readings bring to the end Shakespeare’s work. If you provide a convincing reading of Hamlet, it’s—it goes further than Shakespeare, but not simply from the outside because it fills in what is lacking, what was left open in Shakespeare himself. I—I really like this idea of ontological openness and reality not being completely programmed. It really—it runs head-on into our intuitions, or the intuition of the proverbial scientist, that the world is out there and complete. Yeah, yeah, because here I am not opposed to—opposed to stupid scientists who think that the incompleteness means just the limitation of our knowledge. Eh, what if reality is in itself incomplete? You know which I most like in my obscenity? The—the theological version of this, which is wonderful. Of this paradox, which is this one: why do we have the quantum sphere where things are not yet ontologically fixed, but wave oscillations and so on? Because God created the world for us. And when he was programming it, he thought we will never be able to move beyond the atom. So why should God lose time programming all the quantum details when he... but now, as they say, as you say I think in English, "We—we caught God with his pants down," as it were, you know. We got him! And this is now nice philosophical point, it’s from my new book that I’m now finishing. So not only is for me quantum physics in this incompleteness not subjectivist or theological, a mind the observer creates reality, but it’s more materialist. In what sense? Einstein himself in his eternal polemics with Niels Bohr, you know, insisted that there must be totally determined—we know the story—objective reality and so on, and he uses the word there "divine." He says, "This is something like divine dimension, this harmony of..." God is not playing dice. Yeah, and all that. But the lesson of quantum physics is—is not that God is deceiving us, but that God—which is for me simply I'm not—I'm not a believer—the knowledge embodied in our tradition, our common image of reality, is in itself deceived. Like there is more in reality, there are things that do not fit our ordinary everyday perception. All science is about this. Real modern science, that's why I'm for it, beginning with Galileo. I think that till Galileo, science was basically bringing up the notion more or less of our everyday concepts, or philosophy, like Aristotle: you know heavy objects fall down and so on, kind of everyday ontology. Then the first big break was with I think it was Galileo, no? Who put this idea that an object, if it moves in space without external influence, it’s not at peace, but it moves with the same velocity in the same direction and so on. So that the zero state, the—the common sense pre-scientific version is that objects are intrinsically at peace. And then you need something, at least mechanical object, with life it's get complicated. And then we go on and on, Einstein, and then quantum physics, we get an image—it’s not a good term, even image—of reality which simply cannot be translated into our everyday experience of reality. That’s for me something incredible about science. So again, science is absolutely not any kind of just one discourse among the others and so on and so on. It is in some sense the greatest thing we have. But I’d still like to tie this back to Hegel. And so you mentioned earlier Bohr—I mean you've mentioned him a number of times. But earlier you mentioned his being associated with this idea of "shut up and calculate." But he’s also associated with the Copenhagen interpretation, though this is—uh—a bit—a bit fuzzy, where measurement and other phenomena are observer-dependent. And I’m wondering if this is the connection to Hegel and idealism that interests you, where the objects in the world are—uh—inherently subject-dependent. Yeah, I know what you are here saying, but you know what is interesting to note is first that if you are looking—I know a lot about Bohr—if you are looking at an influence there, it’s Kant. Bohr among classical thinkers, not just philosophers, Bohr liked Kant and in theology Kierkegaard. These were his true loves, no? And it's obvious why Kant, because by Kant you also have this subjective constitution of reality and so on. But I—I think that we should make with Bohr another Hegelian twist, which means not... You know what Hegel does with Kant is not simply to say, "Oh, there is reality out there, Kant thought we cannot get at it, it's noümenal thing in itself, but I, Hegel, absolute knowing, I can." No, Hegel's point is something different. It is that what if—because Kant's points are antinomies. If we try to understand reality in itself, we get caught in antinomies, that is to say radical insolvable contradictions. Hegel's point is rather: why should contradictions, antinomies, be only subjective? Why don't we displace this limit into the thing itself? What if the thing in itself is in some sense contradictory? This doesn't mean that there are things out there which are contradictory. Hegel's point would have been another one, and Bohr knows it, that the reason of this—uh—relying on measurement and so on is precisely because we are part of the measured reality. We are not outside. This is a very deep philosophical insight of Niels Bohr. He is not saying "we are outside the world," or "the world is out there, a thing in itself, we cannot get at it." No, all is complicated because we are part of the world. And precisely because we are part of the world, we cannot pretend that we are not and look at the world from outside. So now I'm getting tired to conclude. May I say—you use it or not, whatever you want—my favorite dirty joke, but it's not vulgar, it’s even a little bit pro-feminist, nobody will be offended, I hope so, you never know today. I read recently a wonderful small vulgar joke about a wife while her husband is out drinking and
unknown
she thinks the husband will stay all night with his friends, is in her bed with a lover. Then suddenly
she thinks the husband will stay all night with his friends, is in her bed with a lover. Then suddenly
Slavoj Žižek
they hear some sounds, moaning and so on, "Oh, the husband is coming back." And the lover is in panic, "What should I do? Jump through the window? Hide in the closet?" And his wife said, "Don't worry. My husband is, I'm sure, so drunk that he will just enter here and drop into bed and just fall asleep, so you can stay here, sleep some time in peace then you go." This is what happens. The husband comes, half—half unaware just drops down. Then—now comes the really Hegelian ingenious moment—after half an hour, one hour, the husband nonetheless gets a tiny little bit more sober and awaken, and opens his eyes and looks down where their feet are, and says to his wife: "Darling, am I still so—so drunk or what? But if I see it correctly, there are two, three pairs—there are six feet there," you know. "Three pairs. What is happening?" And now comes the beautiful Bohr-Hegelian argument against objectivity. The wife tells him: "Darling, yes, you have visions, you are still drunk. Do—do an experiment, if you can. Stand up and go at the door and look at the bed and you will see how it is." And the husband does this and says, "Yes, you are right, there are only four feet, two couples." Precisely because he excluded himself, you know. That’s the Hegelian-Bohr lesson: you don't get the truth by excluding the subject, you know. The problem is to include the subject in. So in some sense the—the guy was still drunk, but his problem was that he thought he is no longer drunk, you know, that... Again, that’s the whole effort of Hegel and also of—my God, intelligent analytic philosophers and so on. How to think reality so that subject is a part of it. Of course, you can do it in an objectivist way, like—I don’t know—evolutionism and so on and so on. But the philosophical problem is more complex here. Sorry, now I'm slowly, slowly... That was—that was the best... we can go on at some other point, I would like to go on more in
they hear some sounds, moaning and so on, "Oh, the husband is coming back." And the lover is in panic, "What should I do? Jump through the window? Hide in the closet?" And his wife said, "Don't worry. My husband is, I'm sure, so drunk that he will just enter here and drop into bed and just fall asleep, so you can stay here, sleep some time in peace then you go." This is what happens. The husband comes, half—half unaware just drops down. Then—now comes the really Hegelian ingenious moment—after half an hour, one hour, the husband nonetheless gets a tiny little bit more sober and awaken, and opens his eyes and looks down where their feet are, and says to his wife: "Darling, am I still so—so drunk or what? But if I see it correctly, there are two, three pairs—there are six feet there," you know. "Three pairs. What is happening?" And now comes the beautiful Bohr-Hegelian argument against objectivity. The wife tells him: "Darling, yes, you have visions, you are still drunk. Do—do an experiment, if you can. Stand up and go at the door and look at the bed and you will see how it is." And the husband does this and says, "Yes, you are right, there are only four feet, two couples." Precisely because he excluded himself, you know. That’s the Hegelian-Bohr lesson: you don't get the truth by excluding the subject, you know. The problem is to include the subject in. So in some sense the—the guy was still drunk, but his problem was that he thought he is no longer drunk, you know, that... Again, that’s the whole effort of Hegel and also of—my God, intelligent analytic philosophers and so on. How to think reality so that subject is a part of it. Of course, you can do it in an objectivist way, like—I don’t know—evolutionism and so on and so on. But the philosophical problem is more complex here. Sorry, now I'm slowly, slowly... That was—that was the best... we can go on at some other point, I would like to go on more in
unknown
detail into all these horrible things. For example, my last story—please, use it or not, maybe you heard it because it got pretty popular. I read somewhere that the Nazis had—this is very which shocked me when I read about it—had some kind of a simple metal object like to crack the nuts, made
detail into all these horrible things. For example, my last story—please, use it or not, maybe you heard it because it got pretty popular. I read somewhere that the Nazis had—this is very which shocked me when I read about it—had some kind of a simple metal object like to crack the nuts, made
Slavoj Žižek
industrially for concentration camps as a special form of torture to crack—No way—Yeah, isn't this horrible? Okay, then I wanted to check this, like so that I will not be accused of inventing it, so I went to Google and put on ball crushers, crushing testicles, and you know what I got? Some ten sites today for masochists, they are industrially produced. They cost very nicely two to three hundred dollars, you know. I hope you didn't test them. No, no, no, but you put your testicles in it and then you can regulate how much your balls are squeezed. Then you have on the side holes for needles if you want to torture yourself more. This is, I think, the world we live in. That what half a century ago, a little bit more, was a terrifying object of torture, now you can buy it, it’s advertised, and we live in a world where you can do that consensually, but you cannot call somebody a wrong name, that you are suspended, no? We live in a crazy world. Well, I’m—I’m figuratively speechless, but that was the best Hegel-Bohr-ian joke I could imagine to finish the podcast, and thanks so much, Slavoj. This was absolutely terrific. Hold on, Geeslings, before you go, please like, subscribe, follow if you haven’t already, smash all those buttons. And also if you haven’t followed me on Twitter at RobinsonErhardt, or if you are not joining me every morning as I eat my pint of ice cream on Twitch at RobinsonErhardt on RobinsonEats, please do
industrially for concentration camps as a special form of torture to crack—No way—Yeah, isn't this horrible? Okay, then I wanted to check this, like so that I will not be accused of inventing it, so I went to Google and put on ball crushers, crushing testicles, and you know what I got? Some ten sites today for masochists, they are industrially produced. They cost very nicely two to three hundred dollars, you know. I hope you didn't test them. No, no, no, but you put your testicles in it and then you can regulate how much your balls are squeezed. Then you have on the side holes for needles if you want to torture yourself more. This is, I think, the world we live in. That what half a century ago, a little bit more, was a terrifying object of torture, now you can buy it, it’s advertised, and we live in a world where you can do that consensually, but you cannot call somebody a wrong name, that you are suspended, no? We live in a crazy world. Well, I’m—I’m figuratively speechless, but that was the best Hegel-Bohr-ian joke I could imagine to finish the podcast, and thanks so much, Slavoj. This was absolutely terrific. Hold on, Geeslings, before you go, please like, subscribe, follow if you haven’t already, smash all those buttons. And also if you haven’t followed me on Twitter at RobinsonErhardt, or if you are not joining me every morning as I eat my pint of ice cream on Twitch at RobinsonErhardt on RobinsonEats, please do
unknown
so.
so.