Syriza – A New Word for Freedom
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2015-04-14 · 1:55:29 · 8,489 words
ideologycapitalismpsychoanalysishegel-dialecticsdemocracyrevolution-violenceliberalism-political-correctnessgeopolitics-wareconomicssubjectivityeveryday-lifephilosophy-general
Žižek delivers a wide-ranging lecture that opens with remarks on censorship and Charlie Hebdo before pivoting to his central argument about how power functions today through the open display of weakness rather than symbolic insignia, what he calls the cynical-fetishist mode of ideology. He connects this to precarious labour (presented as freedom), TINA politics, and the Greek crisis under Syriza, arguing that a realistic left strategy must target symptomal points within existing structures rather than call for a vague total revolution. The talk closes with a discussion of violence, distinguishing systemic/objective violence from subjective violence and arguing that awareness of perpetual structural violence is the necessary first step before any honest debate about political violence.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 17
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Žižek's framing of the Greek crisis as a psychoanalytic symptom, the point where general antagonisms of global capitalism explode and are condensed into a concentrated image.
The gap between an individual's immediate being and the symbolic mandate (insignia, title) that confers authority on them, which Žižek treats as the very mechanism of power rather than its opposite.
Lacan's term for the decentered insignia of power, something one never simply owns but which is conferred from outside, used here to explain why authority is never intrinsic to the person.
The mechanism by which today's masters openly display weakness and ordinariness as the very instrument through which they exercise limitless power, inverting the classical logic of symbolic castration.
The 'je sais bien, mais quand même' structure whereby knowledge of a fact does not prevent one from acting as if it were not true; Žižek shows how it mutates under cynicism so that knowledge itself becomes the fetish.
as “cynicism as hegemonic ideology”
Žižek's claim that under contemporary cynicism, knowledge itself functions as a fetish, the cynical subject claims to know everything is illusion but this very knowing prevents them from fully assuming the consequences.
Lacan's plus-de-jouir, illustrated via the husband who accepts open marriage yet fixates on one specific minor detail in the image, the obscene little supplement that indicates full assumption of knowledge has not occurred.
Žižek's ironic label for the spiritualist detachment (Zen, mindfulness) adopted by digital capitalists as a fetish that lets them continue accumulating wealth without subjectively assuming its consequences.
Short-term, contract-based employment stripped of welfare-state protections, analysed by Žižek as both an economic reality and an ideological device that reframes exploitation as personal freedom.
Present in the background analysis of how ideology addresses the precarious worker as a free entrepreneur, constituting that subject position.
as “entrepreneur of the self”
The ruling ideological framing of the precarious worker as a free self-managing boss rather than an exploited subject deprived of stable employment rights.
Implied in Žižek's discussion of how the formal content of human rights acquires its own material dynamics independent of its original class-bound content.
as “referendum of stock markets”
The ideological fantasy that continuous market movements constitute a truer form of democratic expression than periodic elections, cited as evidence of the open contempt for popular sovereignty.
as “TINA”
'There Is No Alternative', the ideological formula Žižek identifies as the companion of proliferating personal freedoms: the social structure itself appears immutable even as individuals are free to choose within it.
as “symptomal points”
Specific nodal demands that are broadly acknowledged as legitimate yet structurally blocked in a given situation, the realistic left intervention targets these to trigger larger systemic disruption.
The violence inherent in social and economic processes themselves, the systemic violence that keeps things 'going on the way they are', which Žižek contrasts with visible subjective violence.
The visible, directly enacted violence of agents (riots, terrorism, war) which is typically the sole reference of the word 'violence' in public debate, obscuring objective violence.
Stories he reaches for 5
Apartheid treatises argued that inviting Blacks into Western civilization would destroy their 'wonderful ancient wisdom', structurally identical to contemporary post-colonial patronising discourse.
“Imagine all those bushman Hottentots with their wonderful ancient wisdom all that would be lost in our cheap commercialized civilization.”
Five or six million people died in Congo through violence that never makes Western media; the warlords responsible are fully integrated into global capitalism via coltan mining for electronics, systemic violence made invisible by its functionality.
“Congo is fully integrated into global capitalism because all those local warlords...some metals which are crucial for computers and so on.”
Adapting the Marx Brothers joke: when a boss acts and talks like an ordinary man, his subordinate is justified in saying 'You look like an idiot, act like an idiot, don't be deceived, you really are just an ordinary man.' The joke exposes the new logic of power through displayed ordinariness.
“You know this guy looks as an idiot, acts as an idiot but this shouldn't deceive you, this guy is an idiot.”
Universal health care is non-controversial in Canada and Europe but triggers a constitutional crisis in the US, its modest scope combined with the outsized reaction from Republicans shows it touched a genuine symptomal point of the ideological consensus.
“He did touch an extremely sensitive point of the ruling ideological consensus.”
In the film's opening, the protagonist is automatically tortured for minor cheating; Indian friends confirm routine police torture of the non-wealthy is completely normal but invisible in Western media because India is framed as 'the greatest democracy'.
“Of course if you are not rich everyone is tortured regularly.”
Works invoked 8
V for Vendetta film
Criticised for ending with the fantasy of popular uprising without showing 'part two', what happens after the people take over; an example of the kind of pseudo-radical politics Žižek rejects.
Trouble in Paradise book
Žižek's own book; originally subtitled 'Communism After the End of History', retitled at Penguin's request to 'From the End of History to the End of Capitalism' to avoid the word communism.
Piketty's book; credited for good empirical work on inequality but criticised as ultimately utopian because its redistribution proposals presuppose a global political authority that doesn't yet exist.
Slumdog Millionaire film
Opening torture scene used to illustrate that routine police torture of the non-wealthy in India is invisible in Western media because India is framed as the world's greatest democracy.
Staged as the most popular TV series in Egypt according to an Egyptian friend; cited as evidence of genuine (not merely anti-Zionist) antisemitism in the Arab world, refuting the left-liberal prohibition on such criticism.
The Balcony play
Jean Genet's play, cited via Badiou's analysis as the source for the observation that democratic power operates without insignia or costume, foundational for Žižek's argument about castrated public image.
Short book by Alain Badiou, recently translated; directly quoted for the claim that democratic inequality is 'laicised' and wears no costume.
Sophie's Choice film
Meryl Streep film; the title and logic of impossible forced choice are borrowed to illustrate how structural poverty forces people into constrained pseudo-choices that are not genuine freedom.
People invoked 25
Alberto Toscano positive
Cited approvingly for the claim that the greatest utopia today is not revolution but reformism.
Antonis Samaras negative
Previous Greek prime minister who attacked Žižek as the secret advisor of Tsipras after Žižek made a remark about sending anti-Syriza voters to Siberia.
Friends who organised or hosted the event; Žižek mentions his habitual obscene jokes at their expense as a sign of close friendship.
Saroj Giri positive
Indian critical analyst who showed Žižek how references to traditional Hindu wisdom in contemporary India function not as obstacles to capital but as enablers of efficient capitalist functioning.
Mahatma Gandhi positive
Cited as the paradigm of violence that genuinely threatens the system, making him, in Žižek's sense, more violent than Hitler who only killed to preserve the order.
Mary Wollstonecraft positive
Cited as the paradigm case of formal rights acquiring their own emancipatory dynamics, she seized on universal human rights discourse to demand inclusion of women.
Alenka Zupančič positive
Member of Žižek's Slovene Lacanian group; quoted directly: 'Let the image be castrated in all possible ways while I can do more or less whatever I want', the key formulation of power through displayed weakness.
Jacques Lacan positive
Central theoretical reference for symbolic castration, the phallic signifier, the big Other, and plus-de-jouir (surplus enjoyment); deployed throughout to frame the analysis of power and fetishism.
Jean Genet positive
His play 'The Balcony' is the anchor for Badiou's analysis of democratic power without insignia, which Žižek adopts.
Arundhati Roy positive
Organised the ironic petition asking Indian police to treat prisoners at least as well as China treats Tibetans, used to illustrate invisible systemic violence.
Judith Butler negative
Parodied (with the phrase 'imitating Judith Butler') for the logic that precarious employment offers a 'performative' freedom to reconstruct oneself every two years.
Mentioned as the leader whose reforms triggered the attempted coup and whose apparent fall Kissinger immediately accepted.
Alain Badiou positive
Cited via his book on Genet's 'The Balcony' for the observation that democratic power operates without costumes/insignia; also invoked approvingly for the claim that democracy is our fetish.
Alexis Tsipras positive
Syriza's prime minister; Žižek supports the Syriza strategy as the realistic left politics for the conjuncture.
Cited factually as the one who reversed the 1991 anti-Gorbachev coup, proving Kissinger wrong.
Used as the case of reactive-conservative violence that killed millions so nothing fundamental would change; deployed in the paradox that Gandhi was more violent than Hitler in the relevant sense.
Yanis Varoufakis positive
Described as a very good friend targeted by Žižek's most vulgar jokes; defended intellectually as making demands so modest they would have been centre-right under Nixon.
Angela Merkel negative
Invoked as the author of TINA ('there is no alternative') rhetoric apropos Greece.
Henry Kissinger negative
Named as the 'ultimate cynic' who was almost always wrong in politics; exemplified by his immediate capitulation to the 1991 anti-Gorbachev coup two days before Yeltsin reversed it.
Acknowledged for Obamacare touching a symptomal point of ideological consensus; defended against excessive left criticism while not being praised as a socialist.
Mentioned dismissively as an implausible alternative patron for a Greece that exits the Eurozone.
Karl Marx positive
Cited approvingly: a king is not a king in himself but appears as one because we treat him as one, used to frame the analysis of symbolic power.
Sigmund Freud positive
Key insight of infantile sexuality cited as today completely obliterated; children are now returned to innocence while pedophilia becomes the ultimate crime.
Thomas Piketty negative
Credited with good empirical work on inequality but criticised: his proposal of global wealth taxes is a utopia because it presupposes a global political authority that would already constitute victory over capital.
Ronald Reagan positive
Despite being a conservative, credited with understanding that appearances matter and that the Soviet system could genuinely disintegrate, contrasted favourably with Kissinger's cynical realism.
What it argues
cynicism as the hegemonic form of ideology todaypower exercised through displayed weakness rather than symbolic insigniafetishist disavowal and the paradox of knowing without assumingprecarious work as ideological freedomsymptomal points as the realistic left strategySyriza and the limits of reformism vs. radical revolutionobjective vs. subjective violence
Dialectical moves 9
“Far from being the opposite of power, castration is synonymous with power. It is that which confers power on me.”
The symbolic gap (castration) that seems to diminish the subject is actually the very mechanism that constitutes authority.
“In a strange reversal of the classic logic of castration as a means to access symbolic power, we are dealing here with the castration of the symbolic public image as a means to execute and perpetuate limitless power.”
What classically veiled power (insignia) is today replaced by its inversion, displaying weakness is the new instrument of total power.
“The mystification persists not in spite of its denunciation but through it, because of it.”
The gesture of demystification ('I'm just an ordinary guy') is itself the mystification; unmasking reinforces rather than dissolves power.
“Knowledge is here not an obstacle to be suspended but a positive condition of the functioning of what it discloses in its gesture of demystification.”
Under cynical ideology, knowing the truth actively sustains ideological functioning rather than undermining it.
“The very condition of your strengthened exploitation, you experience it as more freedom.”
Precarious work, which strips workers of rights, is ideologically repackaged as expanded personal autonomy.
“What is utopian today is not just a dream of some total revolutionary change but maybe our greatest utopia is reformism.”
The truly unrealisable demand under current conditions is modest social-democratic reform, not radical revolution, inverting the standard left/right hierarchy of feasibility.
“The problem with Hitler was that he wasn't violent enough — Gandhi was more violent than Hitler.”
Hitler's mass killing was reactive-conservative (preserving the system); Gandhi's non-violence threatened the systemic order itself, making it the more genuinely violent force.
“Appearances are never only appearances. Never underestimate appearances.”
Even Reagan grasped what cynical realists miss: the symbolic dimension of politics has real effects that cannot be reduced to underlying material interests.
“Democracy is our fetish in a way, literally the last mask which obfuscates a clear view of social antagonism.”
The form of democracy functions as an ideological veil that prevents recognition of irreducible structural conflict.
Claims 15
asserts
Traditional symbolic power required insignia that covered the gap between the person and their mandate, but today masters openly display their ordinariness as the very means of exercising limitless power.transformation of symbolic power under liberal democracy
asserts
Under contemporary cynicism, knowledge itself functions as a fetish — the cynical subject's claim to know everything prevents them from fully assuming the consequences of that knowledge.cynicism and fetishist disavowal
asserts
Precarious work is presented ideologically as a new form of freedom (the entrepreneur of the self) while actually deepening exploitation and undermining collective resistance.precarious work and ideology
asserts
Personal freedom has proliferated while the structural conditions that determine what choices are actually available have become more impenetrable and are increasingly fixed without democratic input.the paradox of liberal freedom
rejects
Piketty's proposal for global wealth redistribution through higher taxes is a utopia, not because it is too radical but because it presupposes an already-won global political authority strong enough to override capital.Thomas Piketty's reformist programme
asserts
The realistic left strategy today is to identify symptomal points — modest but structurally blocked demands — and insist on them to trigger larger systemic disruption, rather than calling for total revolution.left strategy and reformism
asserts
Syriza's demands, far from being radical, represent what even Richard Nixon would have endorsed — their extremism is a measure of how far the political centre has shifted rightward.Syriza and the shifting political spectrum
rejects
Calling for radical revolution in situations like contemporary Greece effectively guarantees that nothing will change, whereas apparently modest insistence on achievable reforms can trigger panic in the ruling order.pseudo-radical left electoralism
asserts
The first step in any serious debate about violence is to become fully aware of the enormous objective/systemic violence that is permanently mobilised just to keep the existing order going.objective violence and political debate
asserts
Hitler's violence was ultimately reactive and conservative — it killed millions so that the fundamental social structure would remain unchanged — making Gandhi, who threatened the system itself, in a meaningful sense more violent.the nature of political violence
rejects
Left-liberal gestures that explain Islamist violence by reference to colonial oppression are a refined and patronising form of racism that denies the Other the basic human right to be genuinely evil.left-liberal culturalist apologetics for political violence
asserts
Western Buddhism functions as the primary fetish of digital capitalists, enabling them to pursue accumulation without existentially assuming what they are doing.spiritual detachment and capitalist ideology
asserts
Form matters: formal rights that appear to privilege only some groups nonetheless acquire their own emancipatory dynamics, as demonstrated by women's rights and the Haitian Revolution.the power of formal legal rights
asserts
Henry Kissinger's realist cynicism made him reliably wrong in politics because cynics systematically underestimate the power of appearances.cynicism and political failure
asserts
The apartheid-era argument that keeping Black South Africans in 'authentic' pre-modern life preserved their culture is structurally identical to post-colonial White Man's Burden discourse.racism and post-colonial ideology
Quotes 13
“Far from being the opposite of power, castration is synonymous with power. It is that which confers power on me.”Slavoj Žižek · symbolic castration as the mechanism of authority
“The mystification persists not in spite of its denunciation but through it, because of it.”Slavoj Žižek · demystification as the new form of mystification
“Knowledge is here not an obstacle to be suspended but a positive condition of the functioning of what it discloses in its gesture of demystification.”Slavoj Žižek · knowledge as fetish under cynical ideology
“Let the image be castrated in all possible ways while I can do more or less whatever I want.”Slavoj Žižek · castrated public image as instrument of unlimited power
“Cynics are always wrong in politics.”Slavoj Žižek · the political failure of cynical realism
“Appearances are never only appearances. Never underestimate appearances.”Slavoj Žižek · the real efficacy of the symbolic dimension
“The very condition of your strengthened exploitation, you experience it as more freedom.”Slavoj Žižek · precarious work as ideological freedom
“What is utopian today is not just a dream of some total revolutionary change but maybe our greatest utopia is reformism.”Slavoj Žižek · reformism as the true utopia under contemporary capitalism
“Form matters. You know when you have a gap between form and its actual content, it's not simply form is just an illusion, a mask. Precisely as illusion it exerts its own power.”Slavoj Žižek · the material efficacy of formal rights
“We patronize them in this way and this patronizing is the most perverted and refined form of racism.”Slavoj Žižek · culturalist apologetics as racism
“The beginning of post-colonialism is a sincere invitation to others: Please you are free to join our corruption.”Slavoj Žižek · post-colonial inclusion as entry into capitalist corruption
“I would personally absolutely prefer to live in a society where I would be brutally deprived of this freedom of choice.”Slavoj Žižek · structural freedom over individual consumer choice
“Sometimes you have to be violent to stop this violence.”Slavoj Žižek · conditional justification of counter-violence against structural violence
Transcript 29 turns
Slavoj Žižek
I hope this works. I'm grateful for this invitation. I'm very honored to be here because we do live in dark times. You know, we think that we are still in the 70s, 80s where it was possible to say anything and so on because of course it had no effects. It's not like that really. Just let me give you one small hint. You mentioned two things about me, contributor in New York Times and I may add in The Guardian, and my book Trouble in Paradise with the subtitle Communism After the End of History. Well, I'm sorry to tell you the first two things are no longer true. From both, I'm now totally excluded. For example, in The Guardian, unfortunately, which was one of the few places in big British press where it was possible to say a little bit more, there was now a kind of a left-centrist or rather cent-liberal coup d'état.
I hope this works. I'm grateful for this invitation. I'm very honored to be here because we do live in dark times. You know, we think that we are still in the 70s, 80s where it was possible to say anything and so on because of course it had no effects. It's not like that really. Just let me give you one small hint. You mentioned two things about me, contributor in New York Times and I may add in The Guardian, and my book Trouble in Paradise with the subtitle Communism After the End of History. Well, I'm sorry to tell you the first two things are no longer true. From both, I'm now totally excluded. For example, in The Guardian, unfortunately, which was one of the few places in big British press where it was possible to say a little bit more, there was now a kind of a left-centrist or rather cent-liberal coup d'état.
unknown
Fuck Slavoj Zizek! Fuck the academic bourgeoisie! Fuck them! Misread scholars that capitalized on pseudo-radical ideas! Fuck them! Fuck them! Fuck them! [Unintelligible] fuck Slavoj Zizek! Fuck it! If you want
Fuck Slavoj Zizek! Fuck the academic bourgeoisie! Fuck them! Misread scholars that capitalized on pseudo-radical ideas! Fuck them! Fuck them! Fuck them! [Unintelligible] fuck Slavoj Zizek! Fuck it! If you want
Slavoj Žižek
to do a true provocation, hire me. They don't even know how really to insult and so on. My God, like, you know, let me just begin how I would have answered the guy, like, if he does this again, I will fuck him up his ass and [unintelligible]. So, My God, in what times do we live, my God, it's trivial provocation, my God. Okay, let me go on. So, out of The Guardian, they don't even answer my emails and so on. That book is interesting by Penguin. You know, you reported the wrong subtitle. They said We know we are with you but maybe it's not good to have the name Communism in the subtitle, so check it up, I had to change it into From the End of History to the End of Capitalism, no? But that incident that happened here works wonderfully to yes, and I am grateful to Liana whose husband Ed Kadava is also not only her my very good friend. And my God, I cannot resist saying this. If this was supposed to be humiliating aggressivity, ask her and Ed what they have to suffer from me. Like you know Ed Kadava, I cannot resist corpse, I always call her corpse fucker or whatever you know like please, please like, is this the spirit of New York, you cannot even insult people, no? Okay, let me go, quite seriously. So you see it's good to see where even two very modest attempts to say something critical how no it's not true that we live in a permissive society where you can say anything and so on. No, let me give you another example. Even in sexuality, allegedly we live in times where you know who needs psychoanalysis there are no longer repressions, you can do anything you want. Yes, but did you notice how the key insight of Freud which is infantile sexuality is today completely obliterated? Children return with a vengeance as innocent beings which is why pedophilia is now elevated into the ultimate crime and so on. And as for the Charlie Hebdo killings in Paris, of course I must say I unambiguously condemn them. I'm not playing any of those games which I find disgusting, left-liberal games of showing understanding, you know, like yes but we should not forget that Arabs were exposed to colonialist oppression and so on and so on. Well sorry, in this way you can justify anything you want. In this sense I'm sorry to tell you it's even true Hitler was an anti-imperialist, he Nazi propaganda regularly used the term imperialism like Anglo-American imperialism and so on and so on. So again, sorry, this will not go. Also I think this prohibition to criticize Arabs in the sense that oh whatever you say it's immediately Islamophobia and so on. I'm opposed to this not because I'm against Arabs, my God I'm part of BDS movement, boycott Israel, but at the same time one should tell the entire truth. For example, first I thought this is a western propaganda then a good friend of mine from Egypt sent me material proofs. No, there is widespread antisemitism, the real one, not just anti-Zionism in Egypt. For example, do you know that which was the most popular, so I was told by this guy, he sent me even on DVD some parts, TV series in Egypt? Yes, you guessed it if you did: Protocols of Zion. Everything staged, taken very seriously and so on and so on. So I don't accept the logic yes but we should understand them they are so screwed up by Zionists. We patronize them in this way and this patronizing is the most perverted and refined form form of racism. As my friend from South Africa told me apropos of this game, you know, if we cannot any longer play the White Man's Burden like it's our duty to civilize others, now there is a new form of White Man's Burden, whenever something horrible happens around the world it has to be oh somehow we are responsible for it if not directly you know it's colonialism and so on and so on. And I find this ridiculous. A friend from South Africa once exploded and told me You know this is the worst thing you even don't give us the basic human right to be truly evil. You know we are like children, if we do something evil oh it must be your fault, no we are too stupid not able to be evil. This is why one of my most enlightening talks was when I was years ago in Missoula, Montana and some Indians, or as you call them Native Americans, incidentally all my Indian friends hate this term. They told me Native Americans what you in you are cultural Americans you know like nature culture, or they absolutely at least those that I know prefer being called Indians. You know why? You know my joke, they told me at least in this way our my name our name is a monument to white man's stupidity, you know they thought they come to India and so on. And okay, one of my Indian friends told me he wrote a treatise where he proves it's so emancipatory how no we Indians burned more forests and killed more buffalos than all you white people together. Like no, we are not those you know this this is for me pure racism when you say we white imperialists treat nature as an object of technological orientation but look at the native people here who they respect nature as their mother, partner, before they dig a mine they ask the the mountain for permission to do it with all that bullshit and so on. This is so humiliating, so patronizing that you want to keep them in their more authentic mode of being. I know where this was already done, in South Africa before when apartheid was still on. You know, I did something really evil that not many people do, I tried to read some their treatises of the apartheid regime, how they justify apartheid. And it's very interesting. It's not of course openly you cannot say this blacks are less blah blah, no it's something like if we simply invite blacks to join our western technological civilization imagine all those bushman Hottentots with their wonderful ancient wisdom all that would be lost in our cheap commercialized civilization so we think no, the beginning of post-colonialism is a sincere invitation to others Please you are free to join our corruption my God, you know even become consumerist and so on and so on. I there is so much falsity at work here. So now I got too much into it, since I am introduction since I am nonetheless some kind of a philosopher if you bear with me, you know with philosophers you don't go directly to the point Greece. You have to begin up there in the clouds universe and then slowly, slowly and then just at the end you say haha Greece, here we are. But I will come to it. No, but you know why? Not just for imitating in a kind of a kind of a in a kind of a self-satire making fun of myself imitating what a theoretician should be but because I think Greece is not just a particular problem of a particular country down there in the south of Europe. It is in some very naive psychoanalytic sense a symptom. A symptom in the sense of the point where general antagonisms explode are condensed in some concentrated image. So let me I hope you will not find this too boring let me begin with a very general point: how does power, legal power function today? I really mean this what I will say now because then I will get lost in just listening to myself. This is not a formal invitation but really like if anything if there is anything that you find stupid, unclear and so on, just cut me short. That's the only way to stop me talking, you know. Okay, now let's go for serious. Traditional power relies on what in psychoanalytic jargon we call symbolic castration. What is this? Castration is the gap between what I immediately am and the symbolic mandate which confers on me my eventual authority. So far from being the opposite of power, castration is synonymous with power. It is that which confers power on me. For example, take a king. As Marx already put it more than a century ago, a king is not a king we don't treat someone as a king because he is a king in in itself, but he is appears as a king with a proper charisma because we treat him as one. And this his power is of course condensed in his insignia, you know the scepter, crown, whatever. You have an ordinary jerk the moment he puts this on it's as if he is transubstantiated, you know. Or as you say you take a corrupted nobody, he dresses up as a judge and you know the law speaks through him. It doesn't matter if he is an ordinary corrupted person. So this is for Lacan phallic signifier. It's not it's precisely something decentered, something which you never own and castration is this Lacanian name for this gap. You have authority but it's never you in your immediate being. It's conferred on you from outside contingently. However, this gap between the symbolic title, insignia, and the miserable reality of the individual who bears this title, it tends to function today in a radically different way. It underwent a weird reversal noted by Alain Badiou apropos Jean Genet's wonderful play The Balcony. Quote from Badiou from a book short book which was recently translated called Pornography of Power or sorry Pornography of the Present. Quote: We encounter here an imaginary feature of democracy. Democracy means precisely that there are no longer costumes, costumes in the sense of insignia of power. Inequality no longer wears a costume or a dress. There are dramatic, gigantic inequalities but their laicization leaves them without a costume. End of quote. On a simple descriptive level this means that in a democratic egalitarian society, masters, those who exert power over others and of course masters are still here perhaps even more than ever, masters no longer have to wear insignia or costumes that would performatively constitute them as bearers of power. They can dress and act naturally like everybody else, renouncing all dignity. The message of the way they dress and act is: See, we are common people like you with all weaknesses, fears, limitations, we are nothing special. In short, their castration is no longer covered up by the splendor of their insignia but is in a way openly displayed. Like you cannot criticize today's master Look, that jerk he pretends to be I don't know a possessor of some charisma but he is just an ordinary guy like ourselves. Today's masters are admitting this openly. But this so-called honest operation should in no way deceive us. For all their common appearance they today's masters continue to assert their full power, perhaps even more directly than the traditional master. A quote from my good friend member of my Slovene Lacanian group Alenka Zupancic, quote: Let the image be castrated, the image she means the public appearance of a master, be castrated in all possible ways while I can do more or less whatever I want. In a strange reversal of the classic logic of castration as a means to access symbolic power, we are dealing here with the castration of the symbolic public image as a means to execute and perpetuate limitless power. End of quote. So castration this time in the sense of the open display of weakness thus becomes part of the public image, but not in the simple and straight sense that it simply masks the actual exercise of ruthless power. The point is rather that this mask of castration is the very means, instrument, mode of how power is exercised. The mystification is here redoubled. Beneath the gesture of demystification You see I drop all masks and costumes, I'm an ordinary guy like you, the exercise of power which is a symbolic fact not a real property of its agent remains intact. So when confronted with a boss who talks and acts as an ordinary man, his subordinate would thus be fully justified in addressing him with a paraphrase of the well-known Marx Brothers joke: You know, you you know this guy looks as an idiot, acts as an idiot but this shouldn't deceive you, this guy is an idiot. Why are you talking and acting as an ordinary man when you really are just an ordinary man? The paradox is that if the agent of power were to put on the mask of insignia, this would not increase his power but undermine it, making it ridiculously pathetic. The matrix of fetishist disavowal, the je sais bien, mais quand même I know very well but, is given here a specific twist. It is no longer just I know very well that you are an ordinary weak guy like me but I still accept you as a master. It is rather something like: I know very well you are a miserable weak guy like me and for that very reason I can continue to obey to follow you like my master. So you see the point, knowledge is here not an obstacle to be suspended but a positive condition of the functioning of what it discloses in its gesture of demystification. The mystification persists not in spite of its denunciation but through it, because of it. This paradox characterizes cynicism as the hegemonic form of today's ideology. In it, the fetishist denial acquires a new form. It is no longer the fetish, the belief which persists in our actual practice in spite of our knowledge. Like I know very well for example that this guy there, the judge is a miserable corrupted idiot but nonetheless there is something in him because the law speaks through him. Like again, yes. But in today's cynicism, the disavowal of knowledge is not embodied in a fetish fetish object like insignia of power, it's knowledge itself which directly functions as a fetish. What does this mean? It's precisely knowledge itself, but this may sound complex but I will immediately make it clear through some examples, which prevents us assuming fully assuming knowledge. For example, it is true that we didn't really learn anything new from Snowden or from Chelsea Manning. Basically of course we learned many details but let's be frank, vaguely we suspected it. Frankly I was even more of a pessimist, I thought they they know more. But it is one thing to know it in general and another thing to really subjectively assuming it. It's a little bit like, you know, tasteless example I admit it. If you are a liberal husband, but the same goes for the wife, it is one thing to generally know that your wife is sleeping with other men. But you know, things change when you get a concrete picture or whatever. And then usually you adopt this fetishist split: Yes, I'm liberal, open, why not? But you know what's the usual reaction? I've seen it with many of my friends when they have this experience. Then some detail there bothers you. I'm open of course women are free they have the right to sleep with whomever they want but why did she have on that image to put her finger like that up or whatever? You know you you focus on an on some tiny feature which is precisely what Lacan calls plus-de-jouir, the surplus enjoyment. And this is why the most perfidious critique of the WikiLeaks leaks accusation is to say Of course we are not naive we already knew or suspected what WikiLeaks disclosed. Do you really think we are so stupid that we didn't know it all along, so why all the fuss about it? You see how this operation cheats. Of course we knew it. But this very knowledge Oh yes, I know it prevented us from effectively assuming the consequences of what. You know this is the refined psychoanalytic distinction between knowing something from a distance as an objective fact and really assuming this knowledge. And one of the functions of fetish today is precisely to prevent this full assumption of it. Like fetishist is not an idiot who dreams about fetishes or whatever. Fetishists are the ultimate cynics. They know pretend to they know everything. Every fetishist will admit to you immediately that it's listen forget about ideologies, ideals, it's all about power, money, sex, pleasures, whatever. But there is always a but. And that's his or her, usually his, because for clinical reasons one can demonstrate that fetishist position is more much more masculine one. But they always have then some small fetish, something which precisely prevents them to fully assume what they pretend to know, to as we say really know it. For example, I wrote a lot about this in my books. One of the examples would have been how if you take modern digital capitalists so-called who are fully in this virtual operations and so on engaging in this, usually one of the most popular fetishes among them is what I ironically refer to as Western Buddhism. You know like they like to tell themselves: Listen, I'm well aware that money isn't really what matters, you know. Incidentally I totally agree with this with one supplement: you must have enough money to be able to say this, no? Okay, but what I mean is that you know they say Oh what is this my billions or at least millions, this is just some virtual play, it means really nothing. What happens is my inner wisdom, enlightenment and so. You see that's his fetish. This is why already immediately after World War I in Japan already they were way ahead of us here in the West, they began to use Zen Buddhism for training capitalists. Because they got it that the only way to survive this frantic capitalist rhythm is not to take it existentially too seriously. You know, you need a it's interesting how my Indian friends especially a very good critical analyst Saroj Giri told me how this is how in today's India reference to traditional wisdom all that Hindu gods and traditional values functions. It's not that it's an obstacle to actual effective functioning of capital. No, it makes you function even better. He told me that he discovered in some analysis sorry in some concrete exploration by some sociologists they demonstrated how the most efficient post-modern virtual capitalists just sitting behind computers usually they are they are not enlightened and laugh upon ordinary people oh you still burn the candle to that fucking goddess every evening whatever. No, they are the worst in this. You know that's the paradox. During the day you do all the virtual speculations with futures whatever then you return home you you offer something to your goddess or whatever up and down. That's how that's how it functions. Which is why cynics are always wrong in politics. I think let's take the ultimate cynic, Henry Kissinger. He was absolutely people remember if you have a little bit of if you are old enough to remember how he was always almost always wrong. Like he didn't believe as a cynic that that even wrong from the leftist point, he simply didn't believe that communism can really disintegrate. Here I must say this with bitter expression on my face that Reagan knew much more here because Ronald Reagan at least at least you know what he somehow was aware of? That appearances matter. Never underestimate appearances. Appearances are never only appearances. Here cynics underestimate the power of appearances. I remember you know which was the greatest moment of stupid from American conservative standpoint? You remember how from American imperialist standpoint and I understand conservatives criticizing him Kissinger blew it up in Vietnam and so on, all those stupid negotiations the north took it over. Or even do you remember if you are old enough how at the very end of Gorbachev rule that was that last attempt coup d'état? I remember immediately hours after Kissinger went on TV saying something like That's the new reality, Gorbachev went too far, we have to accept it and so on. Two days later Yeltsin did strike back. That's the again that's the tragedy that's the tragedy of cynics. So again that's one big lesson today in this predominant mode of cynicism. But let's go on. I have many many unfortunately for you maybe things to say. So next question: we have this cynical individual with a fetishist denial, you know, he can do or she whatever he/she wants but because he knows it's not really about that, it's all my enlightenment and so on, it doesn't really matter. What type of subjectivity fits this constellation? I think that the best point of reference here would have been what is more and more as we know becoming not just marginal but almost gradually the predominant form of work in our societies. Do you also use this term like we do in Europe here: precarious work? You know, you don't get a long-term contract and so on and so on. I think this is a wonderful not only actual economic invention but also ideological invention. Why? Precarious work deprives you, if you are a worker, of a whole series of rights which till recently were taken as self-evident in any country which perceived itself as a welfare state. Now workers have to take care themselves of their health insurance and retirement options, there is no paid holiday leave, future becomes more uncertain. Precarious work generates an antagonism within the working class between permanently employed and precarious workers. For example, trade unions often tend to privilege permanent workers. And as an old leftist, I don't know to what extent this is the same with you here in the US but in my country and some others in Europe I even went so far and was immediately proclaimed a traitor that I opposed some strikes. Not that I'm against them, but you know at least I know about Slovenia my small shitty country that to be able to strike is already an extreme privilege. Who can take the risk and strike in my country? Those who are mostly employed by state and have there a secure permanent job: policemen, teachers, doctors, judges and so on. They can strike often with catastrophic consequences in the sense that for example our hospitals are now on the edge of ruin because they strike, the government gets into panic, raises their salary and it takes it from the money which was meant which was to be spent to buy new new new medical apparatuses and so on. So we are here lagging much more behind than in communist times. So what in typically in Slovenia these the strikes of the privileged were only the only strikes. There were real catastrophes like some tens of thousand of textile workers lost their job. My God they they couldn't even imagine to strike. Because you know how could they strike because they would be immediately told You want to strike, fine, go. I mean they would be immediately fired and so on. Totally different logic. So what one would have expected that this strengthened exploitation will also strengthen workers' resistance. But paradoxically it renders resistance even more difficult. And the main reason for this is I think ideological. Now comes ideology. Precarious work is presented and up to a point it's even effectively experienced as a new form of freedom. You know, the ruling ideology can answer you at every point. You are no longer just a cog in a complex enterprise but as they say an entrepreneur of the self. A boss of yourself who can freely manage your employment and so on. So again you complain I don't have permanent health care of retirement plan, they say But don't you see this is a new freedom of choice that you have, you can choose even either to spend more now even and that or I cannot even get a long-term permanent employment, they tell you almost comically imitating Judith Butler But you see you can performatively reconstruct yourself every two years, new freedom to redefine yourself and so on and so on. You see that's that's to explore different aspects of your creative potentials and so on and so on. This is what this is how ideology works in everyday life. You see that the very condition of your strengthened exploitation, you experience it as more freedom. But there is a catch here. Freedom of course is experienced here as a freedom of choice. And I always repeat this point that let me ask you a naive question, like the Leninist question: you claim probably that you are free and I'm not mocking it, don't be afraid I'm not the stupid old Stalinist who will tell you your freedom is just a formal freedom. You know, because then what Stalinism does, the Stalinist logic is your freedom is in any case just a formal freedom so it doesn't matter if we take it from you because we know better than you what's good for you, no problem. I'm a good Marxist here, Marx was always aware form matters. You know when you have a gap between form and its actual content, it's not simply form is just an illusion, a mask. Precisely as illusion it exerts its own power. The example that I always use: think about human rights. We know the traditional Marxist critique, they appear to be universal but in the reality they were just rights of the they in a subtle way they somehow privilege whom: white males of a certain wealth and so on and so on. It's true. But it's false to say Okay, so they are just formal rights who cares. You know the history. They began like this. And it's wonderful to see liberalist classics from late 17th already and throughout 18th century how they perform this trick. Usually this trick is performed through a tautology. Human rights are the rights of all human people people, they usually just add insofar as they are really reasonable beings. And then you begin: women are too exposed to sensible impressions they cannot really think so not, blacks cannot really think as free beings and so on. But here is the wonder. Okay, human rights were at the beginning just formal rights privileging certain class and so on. But this didn't prevent them from acquiring their own dynamics, no? Like women, you know Mary Wollstonecraft, she said No, wait a minute, you talk about universal rights, why not us women? And the most noble event, Haiti black slave revolution, Why not us blacks? and so on and so on. So again, I'm not mocking human this freedom of choice. It does matter. But it's not enough. In what sense? Again, if somebody were to ask you are you free you would probably say yes. Then if I ask you a further this vicious Leninist question: but freedom of whom to do what and so on? You know, you would probably say well I have a freedom of choice, I can have sex in any way I want, I can I don't know I can eat what I want, I can read what I want, I can say more or less my opinion publicly what I want, I can choose a work that I want haha okay if you get it and so on. But I think that our paradox, and here I've written about it so I'll be very short, here I think this ongoing secret negotiations, economic negotiations like the so-called TISA, Trade International Agreement whatever, are extremely important. You know we all of a sudden discovered that secretly agreements are prepared which coordinate, fix in advance so many details of our commerce and also exchange of informations and so on and so on that they severely limit even the right of legally elected governments to change things. So that's our paradox. On the one hand personally you are free. On the other hand the conditions of this freedom, the social texture which provides you with certain choices effectively and not others, this is becoming more and more impenetrable to us. And it's even more and more openly admitted. In my last book I quote, for example, that analysis by it was done in Financial Times a comment apropos Syriza where some economist openly said The greatest, most serious problem in Europe are the voters. In other words, We all know what to do, just people don't get it. And there a fun [Unintelligible] or what [Unintelligible] ex-boss of Deutsche Bank went a step further and said that a wise politician should prefer the ongoing referendum of stock markets to these arbitrary elections and so on. And I like this because it looks almost as an argument for more democracy, you know. People vote every four years, they are confused, but what is a stock market then a continuous referendum, you know. Like stocks go up, down, that's the true democracy of the market and so on. So what I'm saying is this, you see this how yes, we are free, it's good that we are free, but the basic coordinates of this freedom are again more and more fixed without us being aware what what decisions are being taken. For example, concerning this TISA agreement, it was now disclosed that when the the text proposed text in debate became public it said there not only that these agreements are to be done in secrecy but that even when if TISA will be accepted, it should remain secret for five years. So for me at least again, democracy should mean not only the freedom of choice but also and here Syriza enters the first glimpse of Syriza, the freedom to collectively restructure, redefine however we call it this very social texture which ultimately decides what actual choices we do have. If you we don't have the space for this as it were collective act which again redefines the field of choices then our freedom is a very limited one. What do I mean by this? I will use a very vicious metaphor. Let's imagine a single mother with two small children. Let's call her for obvious reasons Sophie, you know Sophie's choice. She wants the best for her children. But lacking money she has to make some hard choices. She can send only one of the two children to a good school. So which one will she choose? Should she organize a nice summer holiday for them or buy each of them a new computer or should she rather provide better health care for them? Although her choice is not as tough as Sophie's choice from the novel or the movie, Meryl Streep's choice, it runs along the same lines. And I would personally absolutely prefer to live in a society where I would be brutally deprived of this freedom of choice. So that's our okay I will nonetheless cut it short, this is our situation. And I think that it is against this background that we should analyze our predicament. Again, this explosion of personal human freedoms which again, this is a very important thing, I don't mock them, of course I want to decide what I do, what books I read, where do I travel, what's my sexual orientation and so on, of course. But the problem is again this more about changing eventually the very social structure. And I claim this is becoming more and more difficult, difficult even to imagine. Whenever this is why the famous phrase in Europe but you have it also here, it was recently evoked apropos Greece by Angela Merkel, is TINA: there is no alternative, you know. Like it's it's interesting how again that's the the dialectical coincidence of opposite, how the excess of personal freedoms is always appears against the background of total impenetrability of the global structure of our societies and of course the idea is to tell you but don't you see that precisely this structure is the only one in which your personal freedoms can exist and so on and so on. And there is a serious problem here. Let me restate repeat [Interruption: a noise] whatever God calling no I'm wrong the structure is not like that or whatever. Sorry? Martin Heidegger. Ah yeah, yes. No, you see that's effectively and again I'm coming back to Syriza the situation is so complex that we can maybe even effectively say that that that it's not what is utopian today is not just a dream of some total revolutionary change but that as Alberto Toscano recently put it maybe our greatest utopia is reformism, you know. In the sense of let's just change that law and so on. That's for me at least as I already developed the problem with Thomas Piketty. He did a great job and so on. But I think that what he proposes in his book is strictly a utopia, although it's very modest. To cut a long story short, his idea is that nonetheless he conceived this capitalism is the only thing that really work works from the standpoint of efficient production, so he wants the system, capitalist basically the way it is just with much higher taxes for the rich which will enable more redistribution and so on and so on. Why is this a utopia? I cannot go into details now. Because he is well aware, he is not an idiot, that in today's global market you can only do this worldwide. You cannot do it just in some country. But here we come to the first utopian point: if we were in a position to do this, we would have to have already a kind of a global world power strong enough to overrun the interest of capital. But then we have already won when we have this. You know what I mean, his solution works, he doesn't say us how to win but we are already up we already do it. The problem is to create conditions that you can even imagine such a worldwide radical measure. Or to put it in another way, capitalism is nonetheless a totality in the sense that you cannot simply change some detail for example much higher taxes and nonetheless keep the entire structure intact. Because yes you can do this let's say in some country a leftist government does this but then you will sooner or later discover that you will have to do many more things just to sustain this measure. Now what am I saying here again, now you will say but doesn't this precisely relate to Syriza, aren't they utopians in this sense? No, I will tell you why not I think. Because nonetheless the only realist politics today for me is precisely and in a very specific way in each country to find that's how intelligent politics should work today. And the more modest the proposal appears all the better. In every situation I claim you have I call them symptomal points: something which is even generally accepted as something worthy which should be done but nonetheless in a specific situation you cannot do it. For example, this is why I also am critical about Barack Obama but I'm sometimes a little bit sick of the leftist criticism of him. I mean what did you expect that Obama will introduce socialism here? No, he did a couple of good things and maybe even more important he did not do a couple of bad things like intervening in Syria, bombing Iran, whatever. So I'm talking of course about universal health care. It's not up to me to judge to what extent Obamacare is a success or not. I accept that it's very limited. But admit it, the very fact of how Republicans attack him dragging him to Supreme Court means that he did touch an extremely sensitive point of the ruling ideological consensus. And you see this is why I like this measure because proposal universal health care because where am I? Male chauvinist society, a lady has to go so that [Laughter]. Sorry? [Unintelligible]. No, because you see nobody can say universal health care is I don't know communism or what. You have it in Canada, you have it in almost all of European countries. But if you just insist on it here it causes a scandal and so on. And it's the same for example in some although I know how multiculturalism is a suspicious thing it can but in some countries like in today's Turkey with this still oppression of Kurds, denial of Armenian genocide and so on, just to insist on simple multiculturalism is an extremely radical measure and so on. And here we come to the first positive point about Syriza. I know Varoufakis. I'm really friendly with him. By really friendly you may have guessed from the obscene beginning of my talk, it means that I all the time when we meet he is the butt the target of my most vulgar jokes that you can imagine. For example I once told him your wife's name must be Varu, is this a Greek name? He said no why? I told him you probably belong to some tribe where you didn't yet reach the patriarchal level so a man is named his family name is following like Varufakis, you know like Yanis the guy who fucks Varu, you know and you know what I mean. Like for example in this society Barack Obama would have been Barack Michelle-fakis, you know. That's how friendly I'm with him. But seriously, you know what strikes me in this pogrom against him in European press where they present him as some madman, extremist and so on? Look look at what he demands from Europe, from Brussels bureaucracy. Look at it. Are you aware that these are measures which years ago would have been not even radical social democratic measures but I mean I'm even tempted to say if you look at what he was doing, Richard Nixon, I mean if Varoufakis is a radical leftist then Richard Nixon was a radical leftist. You know what I mean, what isn't this sad where we are today? What was years ago an extremely modest social democracy not what they were doing in Sweden and so on. If you just do this today you are proclaimed a leftist radical leftist lunatic and so on and so on. So again they are doing the right thing. This is I think one of the not the only one in every situation you have to do it maybe in a different way but this is what intelligent left can do today I claim. Not oh radical revolution we want it, I mean what I have nothing against the radical revolution I just claim that if in certain specific situations you ask for a radical revolution it basically means that you guarantee that nothing will change. And I hate this pseudo-radical left who you have now then you find them in Greece, in Western Europe who already laugh at Syriza: Oh, social democratic turn, they don't mean it seriously. Well they don't mean it seriously but I'm sorry they did throw all of Europe into a panic, it's in an emergency state and so on. While in you in Greece, correct me if I'm wrong, you do have a political force which waits for the radical revolution, how do you call it the communist KKE, yeah. They claim again of course step out of Euro, Drachma. They know Syriza very well. If Greece does this now, the standard of living will fall at least in next half a year minimally between and percent. In a country which is already starving. That you know that's the tragedy. I mean I sympathize with you immensely. But you know also when they claim step out. Where, who will help you? Putin, Belarus, who my God? For example they are talking about China. But you must know the story. Chinese China bought the port of Piraeus and it's doing worse than sorry for this ironic term a decent imperialist Western imperialist will do it. They immediately fired half the workers, prevented trade unions and so on. You know the situation is extremely tragic at this level. What will people do if you the standard of living falls? I think and I respect here people, you know, I'm not cynical here. Don't but give like I even understand ordinary people if the standard of living falls further then they will say fuck it why not a modest military regime if it can maybe stabilize the situation and so on. You know because that's the tragedy of politics. You never get a real support of majority. You can get a support but never take October Revolution whatever. It's always a minority and and the majority and I understand them I don't despise them, I hate these radical people who I don't you know what it means to be an ordinary worker in a country like Greece today? You cannot meet the ends. So how to prevent this terrifying outcome? But where my point is a much worse one for this great some months ago when they make a cynical remark I think. Who was the prime minister before Tsipras? Samaras. Yeah, I think he attacked me once as time I like this that I the secret advisor of Tsipras teaching him how to organize concentration because I make one tasteless remark publicly, it was a bad taste joke you know. I said that if Syriza wins they should give to all people who voted against Syriza a first-class one-way ticket to Siberia. Okay okay it was a stupid remark. But no what I want to say this: would you agree with this or not? While they have state power and here shameless, try to penetrate secret police and all that, place your own people there be don't be ashamed of doing this. Because my God you know how for example it's so complicated today because of these European financial rules they're not even able to block the flow of financial capital, no? Because European rules it must be free floating and so on and so on. No I agree with you again I just am more of a pessimist I don't see a working force which will enact what you are the moment you show it to me I go there. It is a utopia but that's why if you insist on it you trigger a much larger process. And I find this even pragmatically much more realistic than to say no they are reformists let's wait for the big revolution. Who will do it, tell me who? I agree with this about leadership. But don't you find this so sad that we had financial crisis and so on, everything. But we are all waiting for what you are announcing: people will take over. How? Where? The only realistic path I see is to adopt a apparently modest strategy but then to really insist on it. Other I don't what would you have done now in Greece? Organize workers to take over? How? You will not [Interruption]. Okay show me one country in which it happened like that. Perfect, I agree with you but but what? I mean I agree with Alain Badiou that democracy is our fetish in a way, literally it's the last mask to which obfuscates a clear view of social antagonism. I have no illusions about democracy. I'm just saying that there are such tremendous problems here you know I don't like movies like V for Vendetta where at the end people takes over. I would like to see part two of V for Vendetta. We we never get there. Thank you. Thank you for this. If they will organize secret police I am easy. Thank you for here. Thank you so much. Um I want to return to your final point about there being something worth saving in European capitalism and liberal democracy. And on that question, um I'd like to hear what you have to say about the morality of non-violence. Here oh my God you touch an even more first I don't think European capitalism is worth saving. But I think that I was much more refined that by strategically pretending to be for the welfare state it's to trigger a process. It's a realist you know I was more dirty and manipulative here. It's to trigger a process which will in the long term in a way acceptable to people problematize capitalism. But when you said about non-violence violence yeah this brought me a lot of troubles because of course I'm not for violence. And then people attack me when I said in some countries even my book was censored when I said I know it was a heavy provocation when I wrote that the problem with Hitler was that he wasn't violent enough, no? But then I added violent in the sense that Gandhi was more violent than Hitler. Because I again I think that Hitler's violence was purely reactive. He killed millions so that nothing will change. So that the system basically remains what it is. So my point here is just double or triple. First there is what in my book I described as objective violence: violence of social processes and so on. I don't propose to
to do a true provocation, hire me. They don't even know how really to insult and so on. My God, like, you know, let me just begin how I would have answered the guy, like, if he does this again, I will fuck him up his ass and [unintelligible]. So, My God, in what times do we live, my God, it's trivial provocation, my God. Okay, let me go on. So, out of The Guardian, they don't even answer my emails and so on. That book is interesting by Penguin. You know, you reported the wrong subtitle. They said We know we are with you but maybe it's not good to have the name Communism in the subtitle, so check it up, I had to change it into From the End of History to the End of Capitalism, no? But that incident that happened here works wonderfully to yes, and I am grateful to Liana whose husband Ed Kadava is also not only her my very good friend. And my God, I cannot resist saying this. If this was supposed to be humiliating aggressivity, ask her and Ed what they have to suffer from me. Like you know Ed Kadava, I cannot resist corpse, I always call her corpse fucker or whatever you know like please, please like, is this the spirit of New York, you cannot even insult people, no? Okay, let me go, quite seriously. So you see it's good to see where even two very modest attempts to say something critical how no it's not true that we live in a permissive society where you can say anything and so on. No, let me give you another example. Even in sexuality, allegedly we live in times where you know who needs psychoanalysis there are no longer repressions, you can do anything you want. Yes, but did you notice how the key insight of Freud which is infantile sexuality is today completely obliterated? Children return with a vengeance as innocent beings which is why pedophilia is now elevated into the ultimate crime and so on. And as for the Charlie Hebdo killings in Paris, of course I must say I unambiguously condemn them. I'm not playing any of those games which I find disgusting, left-liberal games of showing understanding, you know, like yes but we should not forget that Arabs were exposed to colonialist oppression and so on and so on. Well sorry, in this way you can justify anything you want. In this sense I'm sorry to tell you it's even true Hitler was an anti-imperialist, he Nazi propaganda regularly used the term imperialism like Anglo-American imperialism and so on and so on. So again, sorry, this will not go. Also I think this prohibition to criticize Arabs in the sense that oh whatever you say it's immediately Islamophobia and so on. I'm opposed to this not because I'm against Arabs, my God I'm part of BDS movement, boycott Israel, but at the same time one should tell the entire truth. For example, first I thought this is a western propaganda then a good friend of mine from Egypt sent me material proofs. No, there is widespread antisemitism, the real one, not just anti-Zionism in Egypt. For example, do you know that which was the most popular, so I was told by this guy, he sent me even on DVD some parts, TV series in Egypt? Yes, you guessed it if you did: Protocols of Zion. Everything staged, taken very seriously and so on and so on. So I don't accept the logic yes but we should understand them they are so screwed up by Zionists. We patronize them in this way and this patronizing is the most perverted and refined form form of racism. As my friend from South Africa told me apropos of this game, you know, if we cannot any longer play the White Man's Burden like it's our duty to civilize others, now there is a new form of White Man's Burden, whenever something horrible happens around the world it has to be oh somehow we are responsible for it if not directly you know it's colonialism and so on and so on. And I find this ridiculous. A friend from South Africa once exploded and told me You know this is the worst thing you even don't give us the basic human right to be truly evil. You know we are like children, if we do something evil oh it must be your fault, no we are too stupid not able to be evil. This is why one of my most enlightening talks was when I was years ago in Missoula, Montana and some Indians, or as you call them Native Americans, incidentally all my Indian friends hate this term. They told me Native Americans what you in you are cultural Americans you know like nature culture, or they absolutely at least those that I know prefer being called Indians. You know why? You know my joke, they told me at least in this way our my name our name is a monument to white man's stupidity, you know they thought they come to India and so on. And okay, one of my Indian friends told me he wrote a treatise where he proves it's so emancipatory how no we Indians burned more forests and killed more buffalos than all you white people together. Like no, we are not those you know this this is for me pure racism when you say we white imperialists treat nature as an object of technological orientation but look at the native people here who they respect nature as their mother, partner, before they dig a mine they ask the the mountain for permission to do it with all that bullshit and so on. This is so humiliating, so patronizing that you want to keep them in their more authentic mode of being. I know where this was already done, in South Africa before when apartheid was still on. You know, I did something really evil that not many people do, I tried to read some their treatises of the apartheid regime, how they justify apartheid. And it's very interesting. It's not of course openly you cannot say this blacks are less blah blah, no it's something like if we simply invite blacks to join our western technological civilization imagine all those bushman Hottentots with their wonderful ancient wisdom all that would be lost in our cheap commercialized civilization so we think no, the beginning of post-colonialism is a sincere invitation to others Please you are free to join our corruption my God, you know even become consumerist and so on and so on. I there is so much falsity at work here. So now I got too much into it, since I am introduction since I am nonetheless some kind of a philosopher if you bear with me, you know with philosophers you don't go directly to the point Greece. You have to begin up there in the clouds universe and then slowly, slowly and then just at the end you say haha Greece, here we are. But I will come to it. No, but you know why? Not just for imitating in a kind of a kind of a in a kind of a self-satire making fun of myself imitating what a theoretician should be but because I think Greece is not just a particular problem of a particular country down there in the south of Europe. It is in some very naive psychoanalytic sense a symptom. A symptom in the sense of the point where general antagonisms explode are condensed in some concentrated image. So let me I hope you will not find this too boring let me begin with a very general point: how does power, legal power function today? I really mean this what I will say now because then I will get lost in just listening to myself. This is not a formal invitation but really like if anything if there is anything that you find stupid, unclear and so on, just cut me short. That's the only way to stop me talking, you know. Okay, now let's go for serious. Traditional power relies on what in psychoanalytic jargon we call symbolic castration. What is this? Castration is the gap between what I immediately am and the symbolic mandate which confers on me my eventual authority. So far from being the opposite of power, castration is synonymous with power. It is that which confers power on me. For example, take a king. As Marx already put it more than a century ago, a king is not a king we don't treat someone as a king because he is a king in in itself, but he is appears as a king with a proper charisma because we treat him as one. And this his power is of course condensed in his insignia, you know the scepter, crown, whatever. You have an ordinary jerk the moment he puts this on it's as if he is transubstantiated, you know. Or as you say you take a corrupted nobody, he dresses up as a judge and you know the law speaks through him. It doesn't matter if he is an ordinary corrupted person. So this is for Lacan phallic signifier. It's not it's precisely something decentered, something which you never own and castration is this Lacanian name for this gap. You have authority but it's never you in your immediate being. It's conferred on you from outside contingently. However, this gap between the symbolic title, insignia, and the miserable reality of the individual who bears this title, it tends to function today in a radically different way. It underwent a weird reversal noted by Alain Badiou apropos Jean Genet's wonderful play The Balcony. Quote from Badiou from a book short book which was recently translated called Pornography of Power or sorry Pornography of the Present. Quote: We encounter here an imaginary feature of democracy. Democracy means precisely that there are no longer costumes, costumes in the sense of insignia of power. Inequality no longer wears a costume or a dress. There are dramatic, gigantic inequalities but their laicization leaves them without a costume. End of quote. On a simple descriptive level this means that in a democratic egalitarian society, masters, those who exert power over others and of course masters are still here perhaps even more than ever, masters no longer have to wear insignia or costumes that would performatively constitute them as bearers of power. They can dress and act naturally like everybody else, renouncing all dignity. The message of the way they dress and act is: See, we are common people like you with all weaknesses, fears, limitations, we are nothing special. In short, their castration is no longer covered up by the splendor of their insignia but is in a way openly displayed. Like you cannot criticize today's master Look, that jerk he pretends to be I don't know a possessor of some charisma but he is just an ordinary guy like ourselves. Today's masters are admitting this openly. But this so-called honest operation should in no way deceive us. For all their common appearance they today's masters continue to assert their full power, perhaps even more directly than the traditional master. A quote from my good friend member of my Slovene Lacanian group Alenka Zupancic, quote: Let the image be castrated, the image she means the public appearance of a master, be castrated in all possible ways while I can do more or less whatever I want. In a strange reversal of the classic logic of castration as a means to access symbolic power, we are dealing here with the castration of the symbolic public image as a means to execute and perpetuate limitless power. End of quote. So castration this time in the sense of the open display of weakness thus becomes part of the public image, but not in the simple and straight sense that it simply masks the actual exercise of ruthless power. The point is rather that this mask of castration is the very means, instrument, mode of how power is exercised. The mystification is here redoubled. Beneath the gesture of demystification You see I drop all masks and costumes, I'm an ordinary guy like you, the exercise of power which is a symbolic fact not a real property of its agent remains intact. So when confronted with a boss who talks and acts as an ordinary man, his subordinate would thus be fully justified in addressing him with a paraphrase of the well-known Marx Brothers joke: You know, you you know this guy looks as an idiot, acts as an idiot but this shouldn't deceive you, this guy is an idiot. Why are you talking and acting as an ordinary man when you really are just an ordinary man? The paradox is that if the agent of power were to put on the mask of insignia, this would not increase his power but undermine it, making it ridiculously pathetic. The matrix of fetishist disavowal, the je sais bien, mais quand même I know very well but, is given here a specific twist. It is no longer just I know very well that you are an ordinary weak guy like me but I still accept you as a master. It is rather something like: I know very well you are a miserable weak guy like me and for that very reason I can continue to obey to follow you like my master. So you see the point, knowledge is here not an obstacle to be suspended but a positive condition of the functioning of what it discloses in its gesture of demystification. The mystification persists not in spite of its denunciation but through it, because of it. This paradox characterizes cynicism as the hegemonic form of today's ideology. In it, the fetishist denial acquires a new form. It is no longer the fetish, the belief which persists in our actual practice in spite of our knowledge. Like I know very well for example that this guy there, the judge is a miserable corrupted idiot but nonetheless there is something in him because the law speaks through him. Like again, yes. But in today's cynicism, the disavowal of knowledge is not embodied in a fetish fetish object like insignia of power, it's knowledge itself which directly functions as a fetish. What does this mean? It's precisely knowledge itself, but this may sound complex but I will immediately make it clear through some examples, which prevents us assuming fully assuming knowledge. For example, it is true that we didn't really learn anything new from Snowden or from Chelsea Manning. Basically of course we learned many details but let's be frank, vaguely we suspected it. Frankly I was even more of a pessimist, I thought they they know more. But it is one thing to know it in general and another thing to really subjectively assuming it. It's a little bit like, you know, tasteless example I admit it. If you are a liberal husband, but the same goes for the wife, it is one thing to generally know that your wife is sleeping with other men. But you know, things change when you get a concrete picture or whatever. And then usually you adopt this fetishist split: Yes, I'm liberal, open, why not? But you know what's the usual reaction? I've seen it with many of my friends when they have this experience. Then some detail there bothers you. I'm open of course women are free they have the right to sleep with whomever they want but why did she have on that image to put her finger like that up or whatever? You know you you focus on an on some tiny feature which is precisely what Lacan calls plus-de-jouir, the surplus enjoyment. And this is why the most perfidious critique of the WikiLeaks leaks accusation is to say Of course we are not naive we already knew or suspected what WikiLeaks disclosed. Do you really think we are so stupid that we didn't know it all along, so why all the fuss about it? You see how this operation cheats. Of course we knew it. But this very knowledge Oh yes, I know it prevented us from effectively assuming the consequences of what. You know this is the refined psychoanalytic distinction between knowing something from a distance as an objective fact and really assuming this knowledge. And one of the functions of fetish today is precisely to prevent this full assumption of it. Like fetishist is not an idiot who dreams about fetishes or whatever. Fetishists are the ultimate cynics. They know pretend to they know everything. Every fetishist will admit to you immediately that it's listen forget about ideologies, ideals, it's all about power, money, sex, pleasures, whatever. But there is always a but. And that's his or her, usually his, because for clinical reasons one can demonstrate that fetishist position is more much more masculine one. But they always have then some small fetish, something which precisely prevents them to fully assume what they pretend to know, to as we say really know it. For example, I wrote a lot about this in my books. One of the examples would have been how if you take modern digital capitalists so-called who are fully in this virtual operations and so on engaging in this, usually one of the most popular fetishes among them is what I ironically refer to as Western Buddhism. You know like they like to tell themselves: Listen, I'm well aware that money isn't really what matters, you know. Incidentally I totally agree with this with one supplement: you must have enough money to be able to say this, no? Okay, but what I mean is that you know they say Oh what is this my billions or at least millions, this is just some virtual play, it means really nothing. What happens is my inner wisdom, enlightenment and so. You see that's his fetish. This is why already immediately after World War I in Japan already they were way ahead of us here in the West, they began to use Zen Buddhism for training capitalists. Because they got it that the only way to survive this frantic capitalist rhythm is not to take it existentially too seriously. You know, you need a it's interesting how my Indian friends especially a very good critical analyst Saroj Giri told me how this is how in today's India reference to traditional wisdom all that Hindu gods and traditional values functions. It's not that it's an obstacle to actual effective functioning of capital. No, it makes you function even better. He told me that he discovered in some analysis sorry in some concrete exploration by some sociologists they demonstrated how the most efficient post-modern virtual capitalists just sitting behind computers usually they are they are not enlightened and laugh upon ordinary people oh you still burn the candle to that fucking goddess every evening whatever. No, they are the worst in this. You know that's the paradox. During the day you do all the virtual speculations with futures whatever then you return home you you offer something to your goddess or whatever up and down. That's how that's how it functions. Which is why cynics are always wrong in politics. I think let's take the ultimate cynic, Henry Kissinger. He was absolutely people remember if you have a little bit of if you are old enough to remember how he was always almost always wrong. Like he didn't believe as a cynic that that even wrong from the leftist point, he simply didn't believe that communism can really disintegrate. Here I must say this with bitter expression on my face that Reagan knew much more here because Ronald Reagan at least at least you know what he somehow was aware of? That appearances matter. Never underestimate appearances. Appearances are never only appearances. Here cynics underestimate the power of appearances. I remember you know which was the greatest moment of stupid from American conservative standpoint? You remember how from American imperialist standpoint and I understand conservatives criticizing him Kissinger blew it up in Vietnam and so on, all those stupid negotiations the north took it over. Or even do you remember if you are old enough how at the very end of Gorbachev rule that was that last attempt coup d'état? I remember immediately hours after Kissinger went on TV saying something like That's the new reality, Gorbachev went too far, we have to accept it and so on. Two days later Yeltsin did strike back. That's the again that's the tragedy that's the tragedy of cynics. So again that's one big lesson today in this predominant mode of cynicism. But let's go on. I have many many unfortunately for you maybe things to say. So next question: we have this cynical individual with a fetishist denial, you know, he can do or she whatever he/she wants but because he knows it's not really about that, it's all my enlightenment and so on, it doesn't really matter. What type of subjectivity fits this constellation? I think that the best point of reference here would have been what is more and more as we know becoming not just marginal but almost gradually the predominant form of work in our societies. Do you also use this term like we do in Europe here: precarious work? You know, you don't get a long-term contract and so on and so on. I think this is a wonderful not only actual economic invention but also ideological invention. Why? Precarious work deprives you, if you are a worker, of a whole series of rights which till recently were taken as self-evident in any country which perceived itself as a welfare state. Now workers have to take care themselves of their health insurance and retirement options, there is no paid holiday leave, future becomes more uncertain. Precarious work generates an antagonism within the working class between permanently employed and precarious workers. For example, trade unions often tend to privilege permanent workers. And as an old leftist, I don't know to what extent this is the same with you here in the US but in my country and some others in Europe I even went so far and was immediately proclaimed a traitor that I opposed some strikes. Not that I'm against them, but you know at least I know about Slovenia my small shitty country that to be able to strike is already an extreme privilege. Who can take the risk and strike in my country? Those who are mostly employed by state and have there a secure permanent job: policemen, teachers, doctors, judges and so on. They can strike often with catastrophic consequences in the sense that for example our hospitals are now on the edge of ruin because they strike, the government gets into panic, raises their salary and it takes it from the money which was meant which was to be spent to buy new new new medical apparatuses and so on. So we are here lagging much more behind than in communist times. So what in typically in Slovenia these the strikes of the privileged were only the only strikes. There were real catastrophes like some tens of thousand of textile workers lost their job. My God they they couldn't even imagine to strike. Because you know how could they strike because they would be immediately told You want to strike, fine, go. I mean they would be immediately fired and so on. Totally different logic. So what one would have expected that this strengthened exploitation will also strengthen workers' resistance. But paradoxically it renders resistance even more difficult. And the main reason for this is I think ideological. Now comes ideology. Precarious work is presented and up to a point it's even effectively experienced as a new form of freedom. You know, the ruling ideology can answer you at every point. You are no longer just a cog in a complex enterprise but as they say an entrepreneur of the self. A boss of yourself who can freely manage your employment and so on. So again you complain I don't have permanent health care of retirement plan, they say But don't you see this is a new freedom of choice that you have, you can choose even either to spend more now even and that or I cannot even get a long-term permanent employment, they tell you almost comically imitating Judith Butler But you see you can performatively reconstruct yourself every two years, new freedom to redefine yourself and so on and so on. You see that's that's to explore different aspects of your creative potentials and so on and so on. This is what this is how ideology works in everyday life. You see that the very condition of your strengthened exploitation, you experience it as more freedom. But there is a catch here. Freedom of course is experienced here as a freedom of choice. And I always repeat this point that let me ask you a naive question, like the Leninist question: you claim probably that you are free and I'm not mocking it, don't be afraid I'm not the stupid old Stalinist who will tell you your freedom is just a formal freedom. You know, because then what Stalinism does, the Stalinist logic is your freedom is in any case just a formal freedom so it doesn't matter if we take it from you because we know better than you what's good for you, no problem. I'm a good Marxist here, Marx was always aware form matters. You know when you have a gap between form and its actual content, it's not simply form is just an illusion, a mask. Precisely as illusion it exerts its own power. The example that I always use: think about human rights. We know the traditional Marxist critique, they appear to be universal but in the reality they were just rights of the they in a subtle way they somehow privilege whom: white males of a certain wealth and so on and so on. It's true. But it's false to say Okay, so they are just formal rights who cares. You know the history. They began like this. And it's wonderful to see liberalist classics from late 17th already and throughout 18th century how they perform this trick. Usually this trick is performed through a tautology. Human rights are the rights of all human people people, they usually just add insofar as they are really reasonable beings. And then you begin: women are too exposed to sensible impressions they cannot really think so not, blacks cannot really think as free beings and so on. But here is the wonder. Okay, human rights were at the beginning just formal rights privileging certain class and so on. But this didn't prevent them from acquiring their own dynamics, no? Like women, you know Mary Wollstonecraft, she said No, wait a minute, you talk about universal rights, why not us women? And the most noble event, Haiti black slave revolution, Why not us blacks? and so on and so on. So again, I'm not mocking human this freedom of choice. It does matter. But it's not enough. In what sense? Again, if somebody were to ask you are you free you would probably say yes. Then if I ask you a further this vicious Leninist question: but freedom of whom to do what and so on? You know, you would probably say well I have a freedom of choice, I can have sex in any way I want, I can I don't know I can eat what I want, I can read what I want, I can say more or less my opinion publicly what I want, I can choose a work that I want haha okay if you get it and so on. But I think that our paradox, and here I've written about it so I'll be very short, here I think this ongoing secret negotiations, economic negotiations like the so-called TISA, Trade International Agreement whatever, are extremely important. You know we all of a sudden discovered that secretly agreements are prepared which coordinate, fix in advance so many details of our commerce and also exchange of informations and so on and so on that they severely limit even the right of legally elected governments to change things. So that's our paradox. On the one hand personally you are free. On the other hand the conditions of this freedom, the social texture which provides you with certain choices effectively and not others, this is becoming more and more impenetrable to us. And it's even more and more openly admitted. In my last book I quote, for example, that analysis by it was done in Financial Times a comment apropos Syriza where some economist openly said The greatest, most serious problem in Europe are the voters. In other words, We all know what to do, just people don't get it. And there a fun [Unintelligible] or what [Unintelligible] ex-boss of Deutsche Bank went a step further and said that a wise politician should prefer the ongoing referendum of stock markets to these arbitrary elections and so on. And I like this because it looks almost as an argument for more democracy, you know. People vote every four years, they are confused, but what is a stock market then a continuous referendum, you know. Like stocks go up, down, that's the true democracy of the market and so on. So what I'm saying is this, you see this how yes, we are free, it's good that we are free, but the basic coordinates of this freedom are again more and more fixed without us being aware what what decisions are being taken. For example, concerning this TISA agreement, it was now disclosed that when the the text proposed text in debate became public it said there not only that these agreements are to be done in secrecy but that even when if TISA will be accepted, it should remain secret for five years. So for me at least again, democracy should mean not only the freedom of choice but also and here Syriza enters the first glimpse of Syriza, the freedom to collectively restructure, redefine however we call it this very social texture which ultimately decides what actual choices we do have. If you we don't have the space for this as it were collective act which again redefines the field of choices then our freedom is a very limited one. What do I mean by this? I will use a very vicious metaphor. Let's imagine a single mother with two small children. Let's call her for obvious reasons Sophie, you know Sophie's choice. She wants the best for her children. But lacking money she has to make some hard choices. She can send only one of the two children to a good school. So which one will she choose? Should she organize a nice summer holiday for them or buy each of them a new computer or should she rather provide better health care for them? Although her choice is not as tough as Sophie's choice from the novel or the movie, Meryl Streep's choice, it runs along the same lines. And I would personally absolutely prefer to live in a society where I would be brutally deprived of this freedom of choice. So that's our okay I will nonetheless cut it short, this is our situation. And I think that it is against this background that we should analyze our predicament. Again, this explosion of personal human freedoms which again, this is a very important thing, I don't mock them, of course I want to decide what I do, what books I read, where do I travel, what's my sexual orientation and so on, of course. But the problem is again this more about changing eventually the very social structure. And I claim this is becoming more and more difficult, difficult even to imagine. Whenever this is why the famous phrase in Europe but you have it also here, it was recently evoked apropos Greece by Angela Merkel, is TINA: there is no alternative, you know. Like it's it's interesting how again that's the the dialectical coincidence of opposite, how the excess of personal freedoms is always appears against the background of total impenetrability of the global structure of our societies and of course the idea is to tell you but don't you see that precisely this structure is the only one in which your personal freedoms can exist and so on and so on. And there is a serious problem here. Let me restate repeat [Interruption: a noise] whatever God calling no I'm wrong the structure is not like that or whatever. Sorry? Martin Heidegger. Ah yeah, yes. No, you see that's effectively and again I'm coming back to Syriza the situation is so complex that we can maybe even effectively say that that that it's not what is utopian today is not just a dream of some total revolutionary change but that as Alberto Toscano recently put it maybe our greatest utopia is reformism, you know. In the sense of let's just change that law and so on. That's for me at least as I already developed the problem with Thomas Piketty. He did a great job and so on. But I think that what he proposes in his book is strictly a utopia, although it's very modest. To cut a long story short, his idea is that nonetheless he conceived this capitalism is the only thing that really work works from the standpoint of efficient production, so he wants the system, capitalist basically the way it is just with much higher taxes for the rich which will enable more redistribution and so on and so on. Why is this a utopia? I cannot go into details now. Because he is well aware, he is not an idiot, that in today's global market you can only do this worldwide. You cannot do it just in some country. But here we come to the first utopian point: if we were in a position to do this, we would have to have already a kind of a global world power strong enough to overrun the interest of capital. But then we have already won when we have this. You know what I mean, his solution works, he doesn't say us how to win but we are already up we already do it. The problem is to create conditions that you can even imagine such a worldwide radical measure. Or to put it in another way, capitalism is nonetheless a totality in the sense that you cannot simply change some detail for example much higher taxes and nonetheless keep the entire structure intact. Because yes you can do this let's say in some country a leftist government does this but then you will sooner or later discover that you will have to do many more things just to sustain this measure. Now what am I saying here again, now you will say but doesn't this precisely relate to Syriza, aren't they utopians in this sense? No, I will tell you why not I think. Because nonetheless the only realist politics today for me is precisely and in a very specific way in each country to find that's how intelligent politics should work today. And the more modest the proposal appears all the better. In every situation I claim you have I call them symptomal points: something which is even generally accepted as something worthy which should be done but nonetheless in a specific situation you cannot do it. For example, this is why I also am critical about Barack Obama but I'm sometimes a little bit sick of the leftist criticism of him. I mean what did you expect that Obama will introduce socialism here? No, he did a couple of good things and maybe even more important he did not do a couple of bad things like intervening in Syria, bombing Iran, whatever. So I'm talking of course about universal health care. It's not up to me to judge to what extent Obamacare is a success or not. I accept that it's very limited. But admit it, the very fact of how Republicans attack him dragging him to Supreme Court means that he did touch an extremely sensitive point of the ruling ideological consensus. And you see this is why I like this measure because proposal universal health care because where am I? Male chauvinist society, a lady has to go so that [Laughter]. Sorry? [Unintelligible]. No, because you see nobody can say universal health care is I don't know communism or what. You have it in Canada, you have it in almost all of European countries. But if you just insist on it here it causes a scandal and so on. And it's the same for example in some although I know how multiculturalism is a suspicious thing it can but in some countries like in today's Turkey with this still oppression of Kurds, denial of Armenian genocide and so on, just to insist on simple multiculturalism is an extremely radical measure and so on. And here we come to the first positive point about Syriza. I know Varoufakis. I'm really friendly with him. By really friendly you may have guessed from the obscene beginning of my talk, it means that I all the time when we meet he is the butt the target of my most vulgar jokes that you can imagine. For example I once told him your wife's name must be Varu, is this a Greek name? He said no why? I told him you probably belong to some tribe where you didn't yet reach the patriarchal level so a man is named his family name is following like Varufakis, you know like Yanis the guy who fucks Varu, you know and you know what I mean. Like for example in this society Barack Obama would have been Barack Michelle-fakis, you know. That's how friendly I'm with him. But seriously, you know what strikes me in this pogrom against him in European press where they present him as some madman, extremist and so on? Look look at what he demands from Europe, from Brussels bureaucracy. Look at it. Are you aware that these are measures which years ago would have been not even radical social democratic measures but I mean I'm even tempted to say if you look at what he was doing, Richard Nixon, I mean if Varoufakis is a radical leftist then Richard Nixon was a radical leftist. You know what I mean, what isn't this sad where we are today? What was years ago an extremely modest social democracy not what they were doing in Sweden and so on. If you just do this today you are proclaimed a leftist radical leftist lunatic and so on and so on. So again they are doing the right thing. This is I think one of the not the only one in every situation you have to do it maybe in a different way but this is what intelligent left can do today I claim. Not oh radical revolution we want it, I mean what I have nothing against the radical revolution I just claim that if in certain specific situations you ask for a radical revolution it basically means that you guarantee that nothing will change. And I hate this pseudo-radical left who you have now then you find them in Greece, in Western Europe who already laugh at Syriza: Oh, social democratic turn, they don't mean it seriously. Well they don't mean it seriously but I'm sorry they did throw all of Europe into a panic, it's in an emergency state and so on. While in you in Greece, correct me if I'm wrong, you do have a political force which waits for the radical revolution, how do you call it the communist KKE, yeah. They claim again of course step out of Euro, Drachma. They know Syriza very well. If Greece does this now, the standard of living will fall at least in next half a year minimally between and percent. In a country which is already starving. That you know that's the tragedy. I mean I sympathize with you immensely. But you know also when they claim step out. Where, who will help you? Putin, Belarus, who my God? For example they are talking about China. But you must know the story. Chinese China bought the port of Piraeus and it's doing worse than sorry for this ironic term a decent imperialist Western imperialist will do it. They immediately fired half the workers, prevented trade unions and so on. You know the situation is extremely tragic at this level. What will people do if you the standard of living falls? I think and I respect here people, you know, I'm not cynical here. Don't but give like I even understand ordinary people if the standard of living falls further then they will say fuck it why not a modest military regime if it can maybe stabilize the situation and so on. You know because that's the tragedy of politics. You never get a real support of majority. You can get a support but never take October Revolution whatever. It's always a minority and and the majority and I understand them I don't despise them, I hate these radical people who I don't you know what it means to be an ordinary worker in a country like Greece today? You cannot meet the ends. So how to prevent this terrifying outcome? But where my point is a much worse one for this great some months ago when they make a cynical remark I think. Who was the prime minister before Tsipras? Samaras. Yeah, I think he attacked me once as time I like this that I the secret advisor of Tsipras teaching him how to organize concentration because I make one tasteless remark publicly, it was a bad taste joke you know. I said that if Syriza wins they should give to all people who voted against Syriza a first-class one-way ticket to Siberia. Okay okay it was a stupid remark. But no what I want to say this: would you agree with this or not? While they have state power and here shameless, try to penetrate secret police and all that, place your own people there be don't be ashamed of doing this. Because my God you know how for example it's so complicated today because of these European financial rules they're not even able to block the flow of financial capital, no? Because European rules it must be free floating and so on and so on. No I agree with you again I just am more of a pessimist I don't see a working force which will enact what you are the moment you show it to me I go there. It is a utopia but that's why if you insist on it you trigger a much larger process. And I find this even pragmatically much more realistic than to say no they are reformists let's wait for the big revolution. Who will do it, tell me who? I agree with this about leadership. But don't you find this so sad that we had financial crisis and so on, everything. But we are all waiting for what you are announcing: people will take over. How? Where? The only realistic path I see is to adopt a apparently modest strategy but then to really insist on it. Other I don't what would you have done now in Greece? Organize workers to take over? How? You will not [Interruption]. Okay show me one country in which it happened like that. Perfect, I agree with you but but what? I mean I agree with Alain Badiou that democracy is our fetish in a way, literally it's the last mask to which obfuscates a clear view of social antagonism. I have no illusions about democracy. I'm just saying that there are such tremendous problems here you know I don't like movies like V for Vendetta where at the end people takes over. I would like to see part two of V for Vendetta. We we never get there. Thank you. Thank you for this. If they will organize secret police I am easy. Thank you for here. Thank you so much. Um I want to return to your final point about there being something worth saving in European capitalism and liberal democracy. And on that question, um I'd like to hear what you have to say about the morality of non-violence. Here oh my God you touch an even more first I don't think European capitalism is worth saving. But I think that I was much more refined that by strategically pretending to be for the welfare state it's to trigger a process. It's a realist you know I was more dirty and manipulative here. It's to trigger a process which will in the long term in a way acceptable to people problematize capitalism. But when you said about non-violence violence yeah this brought me a lot of troubles because of course I'm not for violence. And then people attack me when I said in some countries even my book was censored when I said I know it was a heavy provocation when I wrote that the problem with Hitler was that he wasn't violent enough, no? But then I added violent in the sense that Gandhi was more violent than Hitler. Because I again I think that Hitler's violence was purely reactive. He killed millions so that nothing will change. So that the system basically remains what it is. So my point here is just double or triple. First there is what in my book I described as objective violence: violence of social processes and so on. I don't propose to
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use this as some totalitarian excuse,
use this as some totalitarian excuse,
Slavoj Žižek
you know, if I'm a victim of objective violence then I can
you know, if I'm a victim of objective violence then I can
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react
react
Slavoj Žižek
to it by subjective violence kill
to it by subjective violence kill
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people and so on. But we have to take this into account in what sense. You know people usually identify violence with change. But what about an incredible amount of violence today
people and so on. But we have to take this into account in what sense. You know people usually identify violence with change. But what about an incredible amount of violence today
Slavoj Žižek
in the world which has to be mobilized all the time just so that things can go on the way they are. Like my problem to take a ridiculous case, but it's not ridiculous it's mega tragic: Congo. The state which is really a rogue state non-functioning, extreme crazy things
in the world which has to be mobilized all the time just so that things can go on the way they are. Like my problem to take a ridiculous case, but it's not ridiculous it's mega tragic: Congo. The state which is really a rogue state non-functioning, extreme crazy things
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happen. Even cover story of Time magazine
happen. Even cover story of Time magazine
Slavoj Žižek
showed couple of years ago that
showed couple of years ago that
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like
like
Slavoj Žižek
five-six million died there unnatural way.
five-six million died there unnatural way.
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And but you know it's not in the media, it's ignored, it doesn't although as I told to my Palestinian friends on the West Bank, no just don't be too sure that you are the symbol of suffering, are you aware that an ordinary Congo farmer would I put it in this terms would sell his mother into slavery to be able to move to West Bank even. It's absolute nightmare violence. But it's not violence outside. As such, Congo is fully integrated into global capitalism because all those local warlords are I don't know the names I'm stupid don't know the names I'm stupid some metals which are crucial for computers and so on.
And but you know it's not in the media, it's ignored, it doesn't although as I told to my Palestinian friends on the West Bank, no just don't be too sure that you are the symbol of suffering, are you aware that an ordinary Congo farmer would I put it in this terms would sell his mother into slavery to be able to move to West Bank even. It's absolute nightmare violence. But it's not violence outside. As such, Congo is fully integrated into global capitalism because all those local warlords are I don't know the names I'm stupid don't know the names I'm stupid some metals which are crucial for computers and so on.
Slavoj Žižek
Coltan? Yeah yeah yeah and all that. You see this is for me the first step when we debate violence.
Coltan? Yeah yeah yeah and all that. You see this is for me the first step when we debate violence.
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Don't just step out of this frame Oh change
Don't just step out of this frame Oh change
Slavoj Žižek
but will it be violent. Yeah but take into account the tremendous amount of violence that is going
but will it be violent. Yeah but take into account the tremendous amount of violence that is going
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on now. For example here I self-critically admit when I quoted some sources suspicious how many people died in the the great leap forward. Yes, you can show that in India under British colonization there
on now. For example here I self-critically admit when I quoted some sources suspicious how many people died in the the great leap forward. Yes, you can show that in India under British colonization there
Slavoj Žižek
were mass starvations,
were mass starvations,
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hungers, millions died but you know it doesn't get into the media how should I put it. Take India for example. Slumdog
hungers, millions died but you know it doesn't get into the media how should I put it. Take India for example. Slumdog
Slavoj Žižek
Millionaire? Yeah, you remember at the very beginning when the guy who is just accused of of cheating a little bit in some stupid TV show he is automatically tortured. And I ask my friends in India they told me of course if you are not rich everyone is tortured regularly. You don't find this in India poorer whatever if you are a Westerner. It simply you know like with you don't read about this in our media because you know India is as they like to say the greatest thriving the greatest democracy and so on. You know what my Indian friends did, it's wonderful irony. They organized Arundhati Roy and others, they organized a petition asking India police to treat prisoners at
Millionaire? Yeah, you remember at the very beginning when the guy who is just accused of of cheating a little bit in some stupid TV show he is automatically tortured. And I ask my friends in India they told me of course if you are not rich everyone is tortured regularly. You don't find this in India poorer whatever if you are a Westerner. It simply you know like with you don't read about this in our media because you know India is as they like to say the greatest thriving the greatest democracy and so on. You know what my Indian friends did, it's wonderful irony. They organized Arundhati Roy and others, they organized a petition asking India police to treat prisoners at
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least the way
least the way
Slavoj Žižek
Chinese treat Tibetans. You know because
Chinese treat Tibetans. You know because
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Tibet why? Because in Tibet at
Tibet why? Because in Tibet at
Slavoj Žižek
least they torture you only if you are accused of political links with Dalai Lama. They don't torture you for ordinary small petty
least they torture you only if you are accused of political links with Dalai Lama. They don't torture you for ordinary small petty
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crimes, you know. So don't you agree that the first step in
crimes, you know. So don't you agree that the first step in
Slavoj Žižek
seriously debating violence is to just become aware
seriously debating violence is to just become aware
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of violence which is here goes on all the time, extremely
of violence which is here goes on all the time, extremely
Slavoj Žižek
brutal violence. And I must admit that at some point this also makes me a little bit more open. Yes, I'm sorry, sometimes you have to be violent to stop this violence. And I don't have any problems with this. Thank you. Sorry but I have to run now, I'm so sorry. [Applause]
brutal violence. And I must admit that at some point this also makes me a little bit more open. Yes, I'm sorry, sometimes you have to be violent to stop this violence. And I don't have any problems with this. Thank you. Sorry but I have to run now, I'm so sorry. [Applause]