The Big Other and The Event of Subjectivity
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2012 · 1:30:08 · 12,428 words
psychoanalysishegel-dialecticsideologycapitalismrace-antisemitismsubjectivitycinema-art-culturephilosophy-generalethicshistory
This is a seminar-style talk and discussion in which Žižek traces the evolution of Lacan's concept of the Big Other through three phases, from intersubjective authentic other, to anonymous structural symbolic order, to inconsistent and failed Other, and explores what this trajectory implies for subjectivity. He ranges across the neighbor as Lacanian Real, everyday racism as structured enjoyment, debates with Badiou on human animal versus subject, and empirical challenges to the assumption that humans are naturally self-interested capitalist beings. The talk includes extended illustrative digressions on Auschwitz survivalism and the 'Muslim' figure, Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful, and a psychological study on money and work motivation.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 26
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “the Muslim (Muselmann)”
Agamben's term (following camp vocabulary) for the 'living dead' in Auschwitz, those who had lost even the minimal will to survive and merely vegetated, representing the extreme product of dehumanization.
A displaced figure of belief: you don't need to believe yourself as long as there is another who believes for you, illustrated by the Auschwitz myth of a dignified fellow-prisoner in a nearby barrack whom no one has actually met.
The mirror-like ego-to-ego relation in everyday intersubjectivity, contrasted by Lacan with the authentic Big Other; psychoanalysis aims to break from this non-authentic mirror relationship.
Early Lacan's expression for the barrier through which authentic otherness must be reached; psychoanalysis aims to access what lies beyond the imaginary mirror-play of everyday communication.
Speech acts like promises and declarations of love that do something rather than merely describe; Lacan uses them to show that language always leaves a gap of doubt about the other's sincerity, opening the dimension beyond the wall of language.
as “the name of the father”
Lacan's fundamental paternal metaphor required to enter the symbolic order, which functions as the 'other of the Other', a master signifier guaranteeing symbolic consistency, later denounced by Lacan as illusory.
In the Lacanian-Judeo-Christian sense: not the fellow-human who is like me, but the terrifying abyss of the other who comes too close and whose desire remains opaque, exemplified by the racist's perception of the Jewish or Arab neighbor.
Žižek's etymology of 'Altona' (Hamburg suburb) deployed as a figure for the neighbor's constitutive excess of proximity: no matter how far away, the other is always too close, mirroring anti-Semitic logic ('the more you kill them the more remain').
The Lacanian analytic operation of working through the fantasy structure that organizes one's relation to the neighbor and enjoyment; mentioned in the discussion as a possible response to the neighbor's proximity.
The dimension beyond the symbolic that erupts in the neighbor, in anxiety, in disgust, structurally unassimilable remainder that resists full symbolization.
The horror in The Shining, as Stephen King intended it: evil is not in an already-crazy individual (Jack Nicholson) but in the place itself, which gradually turns an ordinary person monstrous, an illustration of how the neighbor's terror is structural.
as “unheimlich (uncanny)”
Disgust and horror arise not from radical alien otherness but from something familiar that has been externalized; the spit example illustrates how disgust is always something from inside that becomes outside.
as “there is no Other of the Other”
Lacan's formula for the inconsistency of the Big Other: the symbolic order has no meta-guarantee of its own consistency, no master signifier that is not itself an illusion.
Lacan's term for the symbolic order, traced here through three phases: the authentic intersubjective other (Seminar I), the anonymous structural mechanism that runs the show (Seminar II), and the inconsistent, failed symbolic order whose very inconsistency makes the subject possible.
as “Atè”
Lacan's term (from Antigone) for the space between the living and the dead, the zone of authentic encounter that one can enter only briefly and cannot sustain; Žižek criticizes using it as a solution because it treats authentic existence as necessarily momentary.
Lacan's early distinction between objective non-engaged knowledge and subjectively engaged truth; Žižek notes Lacan later reverses this by devaluing truth as a category of the symbolic fiction, relocating authenticity in anxiety and the Real.
Badiou's concept of a subject constituted by sustained commitment to an event; Žižek's critique is that this leaves no structural place for the Freudian subject of drive and anxiety.
The Freudian concept showing that humans are structurally beyond the pleasure principle and cannot be reduced to hedonist utility-maximizers; Žižek uses it to critique Badiou's portrait of the human animal.
Badiou's label for the dominant contemporary ideology that recognizes only bodies and languages, correlating with the human animal of pleasures, which Žižek argues is a historically produced late-capitalist formation, not a natural baseline.
Žižek's characterization of the capitalist drive to profit: it is not the behavior of a hedonist human animal but rather a radical, self-destructive fidelity to an inverted or perverted form of Badiou's event.
Implicitly operative in the discussion of capitalism's logic of profit as something that operates independently of individual psychological motivations.
Marxist concept invoked to describe work in which subjective engagement displaces money as the motivating factor; cited with reference to empirical psychology experiments showing over-payment can worsen performance.
Badiou's term for the pre-subjective individual oriented to pleasure and survival; Žižek argues this category does not exist in a pure form, it is already a historically specific product of late capitalism, not a natural baseline.
Badiou's term for a situation charged with potential for a transformative event; Žižek agrees with Badiou that such sites require anxiety and terror, but disagrees that anxiety is merely the retroactive shadow of the event.
as “event (Badiou)”
A rupture that determines the entire field in relation to which it occurs; even those who ignore or disavow the French Revolution are structured in their response to it, making denial already a form of relating to the event.
Late Lacan's rehabilitation of the Cartesian subject as the genuine subject of psychoanalysis, not the rich life-world subject of Lebensphilosophie, which Žižek endorses as crucial against both Heideggerian and post-structuralist critiques.
Stories he reaches for 4
In every Auschwitz barrack there circulated a myth that in a nearby barrack there was someone who had retained full human dignity and was still helping others; whenever prisoners actually met that supposed person, they found he was just like them, and at that moment of disillusionment they broke down and became 'Muslims.'
“even to be a survivalist, a brutal egotist survivalist, you still need a belief that out there there is someone who is more than you”
At a Harvard dinner, the host asked everyone to state not only their field but also their sexual orientation. Žižek and Mladen Dolar were shocked by this American norm of public intimacy while American beaches prohibit toplessness, illustrating culturally variable positioning of what counts as public or private.
“can each of us just briefly state your profession... and your sexual orientation like are you gay are you this are you that”
American hotels skip the 13th floor for superstitious reasons, but Žižek asks: whom are they cheating? If there is a spiritual agency dealing with bad luck, doesn't it know the real floor count? The gesture illustrates magical thinking and the structure of the Big Other.
“I always ask myself a strange question whom are they cheating?”
Žižek argues Benigni's film about a father inventing a game-fiction to shield his son from Auschwitz is hypocritical: it plays the same consoling lie with the viewer that the father plays with the boy, instead of confronting horror authentically. The film's real failure is the sentimental ending where the son narrates his father's sacrifice.
“the way Auschwitz is presented to us viewers in the film... it presents us a nice story to be able to endure Auschwitz”
Works invoked 21
Less Than Nothing book
Žižek's own large work; he refers questioners to the chapter on Heidegger (on why Lacan is not Heideggerian and why Lacan kept the subject) and credits it for developing several positions discussed in the talk.
Melancholia film
Von Trier film; Žižek sympathizes with Dunst's character who welcomes the extinction of Earth as 'the only place with life', an expression of death-drive logic.
Life is Beautiful film
Žižek hates the film as hypocritical: it uses the same consoling lie with the viewer that the father uses with his son, and ends in cheap sentimentality rather than authentic horror.
Being and Event book
Badiou's major work; Žižek engages its theory of the event and nomination extensively, praising its internal development while criticizing the absence of drive.
Logics of Worlds book
Mentioned as the work with which Badiou thought his life project was complete before embarking on further projects.
The Shining (film) film
Žižek finds it 'interesting' but follows King in saying Kubrick's casting of Nicholson destroys the structuralist horror logic of the source novel.
Praised as the superior Holocaust comedy: brutal humor culminating not in melodrama but in total authentic despair as the survivor confronts what he has become.
Kieślowski film; mentioned as an example of preferring a persona with some 'evil' dimension, Žižek loses interest in Irène Jacob on learning she is simply a nice person.
Cited as the approximate point where Lacan begins to devalue truth in favor of anxiety and the Real, with implications for the theory of the end of analysis.
Used as the model for everyday racism: the almost-human alien recognizable only by a tiny feature mirrors the racist's perception of the neighbor.
Drive book
Described as 'naive but in a way wonderful'; its empirical findings about money harming performance on meaningful work are cited as quasi-empirical support against capitalist anthropology.
Identified (with some uncertainty) as the seminar where Lacan most fully rehabilitates the Cartesian cogito as the subject of psychoanalysis.
The Purloined Letter book
Poe story used by Lacan as the classic illustration of the structuralist Big Other: even apparently free actions are determined by the anonymous symbolic mechanism.
Agamben's study developing the concept of the Muselmann/Muslim as the extreme product of Auschwitz; Žižek endorses this analysis and uses it throughout the talk.
Some Like It Hot film
Billy Wilder comedy; the birthday-six-months-away scene is cited to characterize Žižek's relationship to Badiou: small differences among intellectual friends.
Badiou's forthcoming work mentioned as developing his event theory further, Žižek reports Badiou's acceptance that an event determines the entire field regardless of who recognizes it.
Night on Earth film
Žižek praises the Roman taxi driver character (Benigni in his early anarchic mode) as the version of Benigni he prefers, before the sentimental turn.
Described as Benigni's 'lowest point', both an aesthetic failure and a political scandal due to Berlusconi's promotional involvement.
Lacan's first seminar; cited as the phase where the Big Other still means the authentic intersubjective other beyond the wall of language.
Lacan's second seminar; the moment of the total shift to the Big Other as anonymous structural symbolic mechanism; includes the famous Purloined Letter analysis.
The Shining (novel) book
King's version is praised for its correct structural logic: evil is in the place, not the pre-existing person, making the gradual transformation the philosophical point.
People invoked 32
Described as 'great' but a 'catastrophe' in that his singular status almost ruined Swedish cinema by making competition impossible.
Kirsten Dunst positive
Her character in von Trier's Melancholia, welcoming the end of life on Earth, is cited with sympathy as an expression of Žižek's own death-drive sympathies.
Roberto Benigni negative
Žižek 'hates' Life is Beautiful as hypocritical consolation; criticizes Benigni's career arc from anarchic bad taste to sentimental warmth; cites his collaboration with Berlusconi to boost Pinocchio as a moral and political low point.
Mentioned as the political operator Benigni visited to get official media support for Pinocchio; and separately as the target of a trial whom Negri defended as a 'victim of bourgeois justice.'
Sergei Rachmaninoff negative
Named as a composer one could shoot without feeling bad, a representative of the fake return to tonality after Schoenberg's event.
Lars von Trier positive
Director of Melancholia; Žižek identifies with Kirsten Dunst's character who welcomes the planet's collision with Earth.
Georg Lukács positive
Described with admiration as the 'middle-European intellectual at his best', honest, principled, willing to risk his life in 1956; anecdotes about the pen and the patisserie condition are told with warm affection.
Arnold Schoenberg positive
Cited (via Adorno) as the example of an artistic event: atonal music determined its field such that subsequent tonal composers cannot simply return without disavowal.
Edgar Allan Poe positive
Author of 'The Purloined Letter,' cited as the basis for Lacan's canonical structuralist reading in which the Big Other (anonymous symbolic mechanism) runs the show regardless of individuals' imaginary illusions.
Jacques Lacan positive
Central theoretical resource throughout: Žižek traces Lacan's three-phase evolution of the Big Other, endorses his rehabilitation of the Cartesian subject, and defends his later devaluation of truth in favor of anxiety/Real.
The leader of the 1956 Hungarian dissident government; Lukács joined his cabinet; Žižek's account treats Nagy with implicit respect.
Mentioned briefly in two contexts: an interlocutor raises Deleuze's view that difference need not pass through contradiction; and Žižek mentions reading Deleuze on the event of sense and Haiku.
Žižek thinks Night on Earth was Jarmusch's but is uncertain; the Roman taxi driver scene is cited as the early Benigni he prefers.
Stanley Kubrick negative
Žižek says 'I don't like Kubrick but nonetheless it's interesting'; Kubrick's Shining betrays the structural logic of King's novel by casting an already-visibly-mad Nicholson.
Ágnes Heller positive
Described as a serious philosopher and Auschwitz survivor who provided Žižek with the key testimony about the two types of prisoners (survivalists and Muslims) and the myth of the dignified prisoner.
Alejandra Pizarnik positive
Argentine poet praised for precise, short, non-bombastic verse; held up as the kind of writing Žižek values in contrast to Neruda's bombast.
Antonio Negri negative
Referred to as 'Hardt and Soft' (with Michael Hardt); criticized sharply for claiming speculative Wall Street capitalism is closer to communism than factory workers, and for expressing public support for Berlusconi as a 'victim of bourgeois justice.'
Close friend and co-conspirator on communist conferences; Žižek engages him in extensive critical dialogue, agreeing on event-theory and rejecting democratic materialism, but criticizing his concept of the human animal and his neglect of the death drive.
Giorgio Agamben positive
Cited for his concept of the 'Muslim' (Muselmann) in Remnants of Auschwitz; Žižek says 'Agamben is right' and uses this concept centrally, noting with irony that most Muselmänner were Jews.
Actor in Seven Beauties (Pasqualino Settebellezze); mentioned in passing when Žižek recommends the film.
François Furet negative
Cited as the liberal-conservative historian for whom the French Revolution is not an event but a pathological French exception with no universal significance.
Pablo Neruda negative
Called out as a writer of 'long bombastic poems'; deprecated in comparison to Pizarnik and Saer.
Stephen King positive
Žižek agrees with King's objection to Kubrick's Shining: King's structural point (the house/place is evil) is the philosophically correct reading, undermined by casting Jack Nicholson.
Mladen Dolar positive
Described as a friend who accompanied Žižek to Harvard and shared his shock at the sexual-orientation question at dinner.
Billy Wilder positive
Director of Some Like It Hot; the birthday-six-months-away scene is used to characterize Žižek's slight disagreement with Badiou as a small difference between friends.
Jacques-Alain Miller negative
Criticized for the position that authentic encounter is only momentary and that we are structurally condemned to live in illusion; Žižek calls this 'too easy.'
Lina Wertmüller positive
Praised for Pasqualino Settebellezze (Seven Beauties) as the superior Holocaust comedy that ends in authentic despair rather than sentimentality.
Eric Santner positive
Described as 'my good friend from Chicago'; visited Žižek and was 'terrorized' by topless beaches in Europe, prompting a theoretical discussion of culturally variable bodily limits.
Krzysztof Kieślowski positive
Director of The Double Life of Veronique; Žižek mentions preferring Irène Jacob's onscreen persona to the information that she is in real life simply a nice person, suggesting he values women with a 'dark side.'
Gabriel García Márquez negative
Associated with 'shitty magical realism' that Žižek sees as having occupied and distorted the entire field of Latin American literature reception.
Juan José Saer positive
Described as Žižek's favorite Argentine writer; praised for being overshadowed by magical realism, which Žižek sees as a 'big tragedy' for Argentine literature.
Michael Hardt negative
Paired with Negri as 'Hardt and Soft'; their position that late capitalism is practically already communism is rejected as wrong and politically irresponsible.
What it argues
evolution of Lacan's Big Other across three phasesthe neighbor as terrifying Real and locus of racismtransposed/displaced belief and the subject supposed to believesubjectivity, death drive, and critique of Badiou's human animalAuschwitz, the 'Muslim' figure, and the minimal conditions for dignitynon-alienated labor and the empirical failure of capitalist motivation theoryinconsistency of the symbolic order as condition of possibility for the subject
Dialectical moves 11
“It would have been an obscenity to make a Holocaust story into a tragedy; the only true film about the Holocaust that you can make is a comedy.”
Comedy is not disrespect but the only honest form: the tragedy genre presupposes a dignity Auschwitz systematically destroyed, so tragedy would ironically be 'too kind to the Nazis.'
“The more subversive move is not to maintain appearances for the Big Other but to undermine appearances.”
The standard ideological gesture is maintaining a fiction for the Other's gaze; genuine subversion requires destroying the appearance itself rather than cynically playing along.
“Even to be a brutal egotist survivalist you still need a belief that out there there is someone who is more than you; when you lose that point of reference you break down completely.”
Pure cynicism is impossible: the cynical egotist depends on a displaced belief attributed to an Other; selfishness is structurally parasitic on idealism.
“Disgust is not triggered by radical alien otherness; disgust is always something from inside you which is externalized.”
What we experience as the threat of the utterly foreign is in fact the return of what was ours, the uncanny logic means 'the other' is always the intimate.
“There is no human animal. The way Badiou describes the human animal—an individual bent toward pleasure—such an individual is a product of very specific late capitalist conditions, not a natural baseline.”
What Badiou treats as pre-political nature is already ideology; the human animal is a historical construction, not a given from which the subject departs.
“The problem I have with Badiou is not that there is no event but exactly the opposite: there is no human animal.”
Žižek inverts the standard critique of Badiou's idealism (too much event) to argue the real gap is on the other side: the supposedly mundane base is itself already structured by drives that exceed utility.
“A typical radical capitalist is not a hedonist. He is ready to ruin his life, work, everything—capitalism is a perverted fidelity to a perverted event.”
Capitalism is not the system of the pleasure principle but of the death drive; the capitalist is closer to Badiou's faithful subject than to his human animal, which is why moralizing critiques of greed miss the point.
“The lesson of psychoanalysis is anti-American Constitution: it's no pursuit of happiness—we are doing all possible to sabotage our happiness; we are beyond the pleasure principle always.”
Freud's discovery is that the human condition is structurally self-undermining, not self-maximizing; the liberal-utilitarian anthropology enshrined in political documents is a fundamental misrecognition.
“Human animal is secondary; it's already an escape—it covers up anxiety.”
The Badiouian baseline (unreflective animal) is not natural but defensive: it is what the subject becomes when it retreats from the anxiety that is its true condition.
“For Lacan, there is a subject insofar as the symbolic structure is inconsistent; before the Big Other became inconsistent, the subject was merely an imaginary illusion.”
The subject is not suppressed but produced by the failure of the Other; consistency of the symbolic order would leave only imaginary ego-identifications, not genuine subjectivity.
“Lacan even fully rehabilitated the Cartesian subject as the subject of psychoanalysis—none of this bullshit that the Cartesian subject is rational but the subject of the unconscious is some Lebensphilosophie life stuff.”
The unconscious does not provide a richer alternative to the Cartesian subject but vindicates it: the split, empty cogito is exactly what Lacan's subject is.
Claims 23
asserts
The most subversive strategy is to undermine appearances rather than maintain the fiction of the Big Other as a surface for whom appearances must be kept up.the Big Other and ideological appearances
asserts
Life is Beautiful is a hypocritical film because it plays the same consoling game with the viewer that Benigni's character plays with his son, offering a comforting lie rather than confronting the horror of Auschwitz.Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful
asserts
The only authentic way to portray the Holocaust cinematically is through comedy, because the conditions of Auschwitz stripped victims of the minimal dignity required for tragic heroism.Holocaust representation in cinema
asserts
Tragedy requires a minimal dignity and space for heroic refusal that Auschwitz systematically destroyed; therefore a straightforwardly tragic Holocaust film would be 'way too kind towards the Nazis.'genre and Holocaust representation
asserts
Even the most cynical egotist survivalist needs a displaced belief—a belief attributed to some other nearby—and when that support collapses, the subject breaks down entirely (as demonstrated by the Auschwitz myth of the dignified prisoner).transposed belief and psychic survival
asserts
A totally cynical egotist position is psychologically impossible; everyone, including torturers and gangsters, has some warm-heart myth that sustains them.cynicism and belief
asserts
The Big Other's evolution in Lacan cannot be resolved into a single final position; all three phases (authentic other, structural mechanism, inconsistent Other) must be maintained simultaneously.Lacan's theory of the Big Other
asserts
The subject emerges in Lacan precisely insofar as the symbolic structure is inconsistent; before the Big Other became inconsistent, the subject was merely an imaginary illusion.subjectivity and the inconsistency of the symbolic order
asserts
The neighbor in the Judeo-Christian tradition is not the fellow human who is like me but a terrifying abyss whose desire is opaque and who is therefore structurally threatening when proximity is not managed by symbolic rules.the neighbor in ethics and psychoanalysis
asserts
Everyday racism functions through a tiny intrusive feature ('their music is too loud', 'they smell bad') that marks the neighbor as Invasion-of-the-Body-Snatchers almost-human, not through explicit hatred.racism and the neighbor
asserts
Disgust is always something from inside that has been externalized—it is never triggered by radical alien otherness but by the uncanny return of the familiar.disgust and the unheimlich
asserts
The decline of the symbolic rules that keep the neighbor at a proper distance produces the conditions for contemporary racism.racism, symbolism, and social rules
rejects
Badiou's 'human animal' category does not describe a natural pre-social baseline; it is a historically specific product of late capitalism.Badiou's concept of the human animal
asserts
Psychoanalysis teaches that humans are constitutively beyond the pleasure principle and therefore the standard anti-communist reproach—that people are naturally self-interested—is empirically false.human nature, communism, and anti-communist ideology
asserts
The typical radical capitalist is not a hedonist but someone who sacrifices everything for the drive to profit; capitalism therefore operates as a perverted form of Badiou's event-fidelity, not as human-animal behavior.capitalism and the death drive
rejects
Moralistic criticism of capitalism (blaming greed and moral failure) is totally misleading; the crisis is structural, not ethical.moralistic critique of capitalism
rejects
Hardt and Negri are wrong to think that speculative late capitalism already approximates communism and that the old working class is obsolete; this position is morally untenable and theoretically mistaken.Hardt and Negri's post-workerist communism
asserts
Lacan's rehabilitation of the Cartesian cogito as the subject of psychoanalysis is crucial and correct; the subject of the unconscious is not some rich life-world self but the Cartesian subject.the Cartesian subject and psychoanalysis
rejects
Miller's view—that the authentic encounter is only a momentary event and we are structurally condemned to live in illusion—is too easy a solution.Jacques-Alain Miller on truth and illusion
reframes
Anxiety is not merely the retroactive shadow of the event (as Badiou tends to hold) but our basic constitutive human attitude, from which we escape either into human-animal behavior or into evental enthusiasm.anxiety and Badiou's theory of the event
reframes
For Badiou, subjectivity is rare (appears only in fidelity to events); for Lacan and Descartes, subjectivity is universal; Žižek sides with the universalism of the subject over Badiou's exceptionalism.the universality of subjectivity
asserts
Schönberg's atonal music was an event in the sense that once it happened, you cannot write tonal music in the old innocent way—even ignoring it is already a structured disavowal.Badiou's event and musical modernism
asserts
Empirical psychological research shows that for subjectively engaging work, higher pay produces worse performance, suggesting that human beings are not naturally capitalist utility-maximizers.motivation, labor, and capitalist ideology
Quotes 15
“It would have been for two reasons an obscenity to make a Holocaust story into a tragedy.”Slavoj Žižek · comedy as the only honest form for the Holocaust
“Even to be a survivalist, a brutal egotist survivalist, you still need a belief that out there there is someone who is more than you.”Slavoj Žižek · transposed belief / subject supposed to believe
“I don't believe that a totally cynical egotist position is even possible.”Slavoj Žižek · impossibility of pure cynicism
“It doesn't matter if you believe; what matters for you to retain your sanity is that there should be another about whom you believe that he's the thing. We all need a naive other.”Slavoj Žižek · transposed belief and the Big Other
“Disgust is not oh my God alien so foreign—disgust is always something from inside you which is externalized.”Slavoj Žižek · disgust as uncanny externalization
“The lesson of psychoanalysis is anti-American Constitution. It's no pursuit of happiness; we are doing all possible to sabotage our happiness. We are beyond the pleasure principle always.”Slavoj Žižek · death drive versus utilitarian anthropology
“My reproach to Badiou is exactly the opposite one: there is no human animal.”Slavoj Žižek · critique of Badiou's human animal via the death drive
“A typical radical capitalist is not a hedonist. He is ready to ruin his life, work, everything—it's a perverted fidelity to a perverted event.”Slavoj Žižek · capitalism as perverted Badiouian event / death drive
“Our nature is not capitalism.”Slavoj Žižek · empirical refutation of capitalist anthropology
“If you are paid more you do it worse.”Slavoj Žižek · money undermines performance on meaningful work
“Human animal is secondary; it's already an escape—it's to cover up anxiety.”Slavoj Žižek · anxiety as primary condition; human animal as defensive retreat
“There is a subject in so far as the symbolic structure is inconsistent.”Slavoj Žižek · subject produced by inconsistency of the Big Other
“Late Lacan even fully rehabilitated the Cartesian subject as the subject of psychoanalysis—none of this bullshit that the Cartesian subject is rational but the subject of the unconscious is some Lebensphilosophie philosophy of life stuff.”Slavoj Žižek · Cartesian cogito as subject of psychoanalysis
“The neighbor is precisely the terrifying other, the abyss I never—the neighbor is the other about whom I never know what he really wants.”Slavoj Žižek · the neighbor as Lacanian Real
“What is Catholic Church? That well-known organization of financial speculators and pedophiles.”Slavoj Žižek · sardonic dismissal of moral critique of capitalism
Transcript 38 turns
unknown
In this stuff of the Big Other and so on and then and then we can well start with the thing proper. So I think we stopped with a variation of those two, I mean, faces as it were, sorry, of the Big Other. Big
In this stuff of the Big Other and so on and then and then we can well start with the thing proper. So I think we stopped with a variation of those two, I mean, faces as it were, sorry, of the Big Other. Big
Slavoj Žižek
Other as the secret, secret Big Other more in the theological sense which controls and so on, links the Big Other which runs the show and Big Other not as a secret master but as an agency of surface, that innocent gaze for whom appearances should be maintained. And again, as I emphasized, I think that it's much more subversive to undermine appearances. For example, maybe you know this story, but it's a favorite one so fuck you I mean if you did it. What's my idea to make better, this is a nice example of how to sustain yourself you need another sucker as it were to believe for you. Here I had a nice debate long ago with some theologians who of course they were not convinced, but I still insist on it that when people say oh we have an innate tendency to believe, no we need someone to believe even if it's to believe for us. I wanted to mention namely Roberto Benigni, you saw Life is Beautiful, no? I hate the movie although I agree with the principle which is and in these crazy times when people are losing sense of irony when I said that it's deeply significant that the only true film about Holocaust that you can make is a comedy, I was as you can imagine accused of oh you are making fun of us, tragedy and so on. No, my point is on the contrary that it's an obscenity, it would have been for two reasons an obscenity to make a Holocaust story into a tragedy. Why? Because, and that's a very fine point made already by Lacan, for you to play the role of a tragic subject a certain two conditions have to be met. A, a certain minimal dignity, you know, which let's say I'm tortured or at least terrorized under a court, but I'm still in a position to do that heroic oh shoot it I better die than to than to submit, you know, this kind of heroic stance. But you know in Auschwitz and so on things were so terrifying that you were simply deprived of this very space. You couldn't play a hero in Auschwitz. The conditions were so horrible that to render the absurd of it the only way is a comedy. Again you got my point. If you if you were to portray let's say a heroic confrontation between a resisting Jew and the usual bad SS officer in Auschwitz, you would be way too kind towards the Nazis. Because precisely the guy who likes to be ill when he should have come here Giorgio Agamben, no? He developed this nicely in his book Remnants of Auschwitz or what no. How you know the so-called Muslims, the living dead in Auschwitz. This is the product of Auschwitz. You know what he calls Muslims and it's a wonderful irony because mostly they were Jews you know. And it's also a wonderful example of a subject supposed to believe. Namely in Auschwitz and at some other camps there were, you know who explained it to me, I'm sorry if you know the story, Agnes Heller who was a pupil of Georg Lukács the great Hungarian Marxist who is a little bit over old-fashioned half-forgotten today but I know people who knew him. I mean he died in the sixties, his big period was the early twenties. But he was this kind of a wonderful person at the same time a radical leftist communist but as to his subjective attitude this you know the middle-European intellectual at his best. And he was personally absolutely honest and so on. For example although he was at some point almost official party philosopher in '56 you know when there was the dissident anti-communist rebellion in Prague, he joined Imre Nagy, the government, he was there even a minister for culture. And he risked his life because later he was of course like others arrested by Soviet police later. And this is the first wonderful story. I knew a biographer of him from Hungary who made him and knew him very well and he told me when Russian KGB agents come when rebellion was squashed in Budapest to arrest him, they, isn't this a wonderful naive gesture, they asked him please give us any weapons that you have. You know what he did? He took his pen, that's the only weapon I have. I mean it's so naively beautifully European, you know. And so and he was so honest. I heard this myth that when then later they didn't shoot him when they made a trial against Imre Nagy and other leading rebels or whatever because they they of course Soviet Union secret police was listening taping their their phone conversations. And they learned from them that Lukács was the leftist line within dissident government that he often argued let's not abandon socialism we just want a more open socialism let's not drop out of Warsaw and so on. So they told him listen this is not Stalinism Russians, we don't want you to lie we knew from our transcriptions of your phones what your position was there, we just want you to say that you know the truth. But this is wonderful. He said if you release Imre Nagy the prime minister of dissidents out of prison and if he is guaranteed freedom and if you arrange a meeting between him and me in a well-known central central how do you call it patisserie sweet store for cakes cafeteria in Budapest a meeting there then I promise you that I will tell him everything but not in a court and he insisted to the end he was again thrown out of party and so on. So my point is the following one. I didn't lose my track. But yes nonetheless something interesting that you should learn. He was this typical old-style Marxist aesthetic for whom literature was the only this heroic real thing. Like you know he has absolutely no sense this the other one Agnes Heller who was his probably mistress and for at least assistant when she was young but now she is a serious philosopher very old now of course she told me that once she tried to seduce him theoretically into painting so she showed him the big philosopher some Picasso reproductions. And Lukács's reaction was you know this ridiculous one of common-sense people, every child could do this what is this and so on you know. So what Agnes Heller now more seriously told me is something very precise and very tragic beautiful. She was in Auschwitz like the serious one, you know it. I saw she was even discreet no she didn't boast it like oh see my numbers there tattooed but she was there and she told me something beautiful. Again there were three two types and some acts of people in a really rough concentration camp which was Auschwitz. You should make a crucial distinction between Auschwitz and Arbeitslager, work camps like Dachau. In Dachau you had a chance to survive more or less you know. Auschwitz and so on were killing them. She told me two types. One were survivalists, you just did everything to survive. And even here, that's beautiful detail, there were unwritten rules. Like let's say sorry don't take it personally me and you are there. I go to the toilet and am stupid enough to leave that little piece of bread of mine there on the table. You are allowed to, I'm stupid I was stupid you are but for example if I'm eating it you are not allowed to beat me and you know what I mean. Like but nonetheless with all these minimal rules there were again limits, rules, it was a cruel survivalist regime. But and then there were Muslims, the living dead. You know why? Because of European racism. The usual idea standard at that time of Muslims was that these are people totally totally resigned to their fate who just pray and do like that and when you break down in camp and you just not even want to survive you just vegetate you behaved like that so the nickname Muselmänner, Muslims, was in use for them. They were the living dead in the sense of as long as they were they were still alive but without this minimal minimal will even to survive they just didn't care. You know and Agamben is right I checked with some other documentaries who told me that for example when American TV no sorry it was not TV movie journalists you remember entered some of the camps from the West also and then Dachau and so on on and on you get that's easy you get all those heaps thousands of corpses no? But they were too horrified to shoot Muslims. There are just a couple of movie shots of Muslims, this living dead mostly in the background like you have to look it was too traumatic to to put the camera on them. So but now comes the crucial point she told me that in every unit, barrack, there was a myth. First she thought it's specific to her unit but then she told me that she learned because when you are out on work detail working you of course talk a little bit with others that it was practically in all units there was a myth that not in your barrack but usually in some nearby house barrack there is someone who retained his full human dignity who is not yet a Muslim sorry not even a survivalist you know the guy who is still helping others and so on like who didn't but she told me then the truly tragic thing that as a rule then something crazy happened on some work detail or whatever out it happened sooner or later that you met that guy from the nearby barrack and of course what happened then is that you usually established that it was a myth that they are exactly the same shit like you survivalists and so on and now comes the crucial thing at that point people broke down and become Muslims. So the the tragic beauty of this is that even to be a survivalist, a brutal egotist survivalist, you still need a belief that out there there is someone who is more than you. You know when you lose that point of reference you break down completely. And I think this is deeply true even psychologically. I don't believe that a totally cynical egotist position is even possible. I claim even if you look at the filthiest gangster torturers you will always find some myth you know like oh I'm really doing it for my kids for my family I love this that. Everyone has a warm heart you know which is why I think it's bullshit it doesn't matter it's it's no excuse as it were you know. And again this is a nice example of transposed belief how it doesn't matter if you believe what matters for you to retain your sanity is that there should be another about whom you believe that he's thing. We all need a naive other. And today I found this now quarter of an hour ago when I was checking the email about some book which is even no and I read about it how we are all superstitious and it's even an interesting book it refers to all these daily practices that even if we are cynics you know we believe from these most ordinary cases like for example you watch football soccer whatever at home and you shout there you know it's this is a nice example of magical everyday magical thinking. You do gestures which in practice demonstrate that you secretly believe that in this way you can influence the outcome although you are alone at home but you do it and so on and so on. And here that would be my idea of historicity different figures of the Big Other. Here maybe Americans have a problem I will not go too much into it. I noticed something which as far as I know is specific to the United States correct me if I'm wrong maybe I'm wrong. But usually I check it I often find myself in hotels with more than floors then you know what I am talking about. In American hotels always they skip the 13th floor no it's and But I always ask myself a strange question whom are they cheating? But doesn't God know you would say if there is an evil bad luck there must be some spiritual agency God or evil demon who deals with but that agency which condemned the 13th whom you prevent but doesn't he know that is really like whom are you cheating you know. This is very this is basically very enigmatic for me you know as I quoted I think no is it in this book yes the last big fat one. Another nice example and these are differences in Big Other for example it happened to me and a friend of mine when Mladen Dolar when four years ago I think three or four we were in Harvard giving a talk and then I hate these rituals after the talk we were invited out to dinner and some with some academics who were we didn't know very well each other so the guy who organized it said okay now the same boring I'm still sorry for it ritual as me yesterday with you let's all present ourselves to each other but in much nastier way he said can each of us just briefly state your profession I mean where are you employed if you are your field of work this is my level and then he added something that I find obscene that I would never have done with all my bad taste jokes and then he said and your sexual orientation like are you gay are you this are you that. I mean we were me and my friend we were simply shocked you know like how can you know I a my automatic idea but then I remember that you don't make jokes with Americans here too much was to say something just to provoke them of course a lie but a ridiculous lie to make brutally fun of it like I only can do it with young children but I must be less than six years and you some total nonsense like this you know but okay then but then we got it my friend of and me how it's much more complex. Yes Americans can do this but at the same time if you go to at least North American beaches topless is strictly prohibited you don't do it while in Europe even under dark communism all around somewhere in the late sixties early seventies even in ex-Yugoslavia everywhere it become a rule it's not a problem. It's simply not noticed. The I don't know I may be like in a sexist way vulgar the only one who does wear a bra and so on are usually old women who are afraid to show that they don't have beautiful breasts to be vulgar. It's almost a standard. Now something happened here a friend of us it's Eric Santner my good friend I mean you can tell you who from Chicago visited us there went to a beach with us and he was so terrorized you know all these breasts around him even personally attacked and so on and then we tried to develop but we didn't get a good one a theory how you know it's too easy to blame just the stupid Americans but how totally how in what a different way the limit is posited you know that in United States it often happened to me it's embarrassingly open in the sense of publicly admitting I'm gay even friends talked to me about their sexual practices I found it embarrassing I cannot but when you come to for example on a beach being being topless they they get even here in even if you compare for example if you go to sauna sauna how do you call it no and in Germany for example they are bisexual open and you don't do orgies there it's simply considered normal nothing. But mostly as far as I know in the States and elsewhere it's separated no? So again okay but I don't want to lose time here too much what I want to say is that let's return to this problem of how again how how appearance matters how and yes Benigni comes Life is Beautiful why do I hate that movie? Because I think it's a hypocritical movie which the trick of the movie is its as it were allegorical dimension it plays with us the viewers exactly the same game as within the film the father Roberto Benigni plays with his boy. You know the story no father and son are sent to Auschwitz and there to in order to enable the son to survive the horror father tells him a bullshit story no that this is not really a prison they voluntarily went there if you survive that you can we can leave at any point you want but if you are heroic enough to stay there at the end you will get a big prize it's all just a free competition and so on and so on no. That's the story and what I claim is that the way Auschwitz is presented to us viewers in the film with all the jokes funny side it's basically the same game it presents us a nice story to be able to endure Auschwitz but my point is this one would you agree or not that the way to make a much better film even a much more well if I use in more neutral way now the term tragic or terrifying. Just you know the film you know what happens at the end that's why I hate the movie at the end you are not supposed to laugh at the end you cry remember when father is shot and then in a voice-over the last scene son at home he says only now I can see my father's sacrifice blah blah blah blah. This is I think where the movie goes wrong an authentic desperate movie something should have happened something nothing obscene in my style not a big rain but something very elementary. What if and it would be even very realistic what if just before the father is shot the son were to discover no the father who heroically sacrifices himself for the son the father were to discover that the son knew it all the time the reality that Auschwitz is not a set for a big game hunger game or whatever you would call it today but just death camp but just that the son was also caring and loving like his father and just pretended to be naive to make it easier for his father no. Admit it that this would make all situation much more authentically tragic I don't know how to how to say no. And that's why I hate the movie that's why I think it's false. And I have general problem with Roberto Benigni I like him in his early movies where he is simply evil bad-taste jokes like did you see that was it Jim Jarmusch or what Night on Earth that taxi driver in Rome that's my guy sorry. A seen-as-racist taxi. Sorry? A seen-as-racist taxi. Yeah but why why exactly a racist and not I mean you cannot be a non-racist and my friend I mean exactly so what I want to say is that but then what I really hate is how then at a certain point precisely with La vita bella Benigni I claim experienced a need to show but I'm not just bad I'm it's just a game all that I'm really a good warm caring guy like you that's the end I claim. This is why he went his lowest point was then Pinocchio which is the ultimate but not only it totally failed but even politically it was a scandal. You know why when the movie was made to get an Oscar it didn't work so Benigni made a compromise and went to visit Berlusconi and got Berlusconi's help. The Berlusconi ordered his newspapers to write positive reviews the movie to be shown in own in cinema theaters movie theaters owned by Berlusconi to get it a boost and so on and so on. This so you know which movie is for me much better if you saw it a concentration camp comedy because it is also this brutal humor and you also have a point at the end where you no longer laugh but what you get there it's not this melodrama sentimental tears you get total despair. Did you see was it Liliana Cavani or Lina Wertmüller I always confuse them with Giancarlo Giannini Pasqualino Settebellezze. It's a wonderful movie of this type of Italian seducing guy Sicilian no who is again finds himself in Auschwitz and the capo is a horrible fat blonde cruel German woman and he gets the point that the way to survive is to seduce her and then it has the most disgusting sexual act and so on all these but then at the end when he does survive but all people around him are killed nothing sentimental you just get total despair you know like he survived but as a nobody it's much more a much more I think a much more authentic tragic film. So okay let's stop with this and let's go on with Big Other. This is nonetheless only one aspect of the Big Other. I began I began at with this idea of how the Big Other in Lacan how Lacan always reformulates changes his position and so on I think precisely that again the Big Other is an exemplary case but also an exemplary case of what you cannot simply say at the end he found the true position or what. Somehow you have to maintain all these passages. Namely if you look at early Lacan even the first seminar Seminar I Freud's Technical Writings there the Big Other is not yet the symbolic order. The Big Other is simply the other in intersubjectivity but the authentic other. Lacan's idea is very simple in everyday life we have this mirror-like communication between small others like what we imagine to be our imaginary identity and the task of analysis is to break from this non-authentic mirror relationship to my authentic subjectivity talking to the other Lacan even uses a very traditional metaphysical expression beyond the wall of language like to reach there what is behind that's Lacan's original other Big Other. Then and he even gives very nice examples which are pertinent to the end of this dimension of the other beyond the wall of language he takes the example of performative statements and promises you know like I promise that I tell the truth I love you whatever but he says like the moment we are in language there is always a doubt you are telling me this by why do you you know you never know the other. This is then only then massively in one year in second Lacan's second seminar Seminar number two then it's a total shift Big Other becomes the Big Other in the standard structural sense in the sense of an anonymous symbolic mechanism which really runs the show. Exemplary is here you must know it Edgar Allan Poe's story The Purloined Letter and Lacan's interpretation of it which is this classic structuralist interpretation there is a famous passage in Lacan when he says that the lesson of this Edgar Allan Poe story is that even when we think that we are as us us acting sorry freely these are just imaginary illusions in reality the Big Other runs the show and our imaginary free identities what you freely think you are are just imaginary illusions so in this sense then the goal of psychoanalytic treatment becomes simply to dispel the imaginary illusion and to be able to formulate your structural role how are you over-determined by a symbolic structure. So again this is the let's call it Lévi-Straussian other a kind of objective symbolic structure and as such it's unconscious you are not even aware of it but it totally over-determines what you do the meanings of it and so on and so on. Then as you hinted before then complications began because at for like one two three years Lacan was flirting with this radical structuralist position we are just imaginary puppets symbolic anonymous symbolic order is ruling pulling the strings. Do you agree with this? Sorry? Do you agree with this? Of course not but my point is that Lacan immediately disagreed with himself you know because then Lacan got something else namely that this structure is necessarily inconsistent antagonistic inoperative failed and so has a status of semblance of an illusion structural and everything changes with this. How can we see this? For example you know Lacan one of his big phrases is there is no other of the other. He simply means that the Big Other isn't as it were reflexively caught in itself to guarantee its consistency it's inconsistent open symbolic order doesn't have a master or consistency which controlled it. Now again you should ask yourself the usual question which is but who is the idiot who claims that there is the other an other of the other? Well Lacan himself in his third seminar on psychosis where for Lacan what he calls the name of the father the fundamental metaphor which you have to assume to enter symbolic order is precisely the other of the other the master signifier which is why later it's absolutely crucial that Lacan denounces father paternal authority as as illusory as a fake and so on and so on. So what I want to say is that and yes with this when objective symbolic structure becomes inconsistent at that point the other from the beginning re-emerges but in a way the other which is this the otherness of the abyss of subjectivity but in a much more radical way even in theological terms as the neighbor. And as Lacan knows very well the neighbor in Judeo-Christian tradition and this is what for Lacan makes it great the neighbor is not the fellow out there who is like me no the neighbor is precisely the terrifying other the abyss I never you know the neighbor is the other about whom I never know what he really wants who remains out there. For example this is why in a beautiful re-reading of Decalogue and so on Lacan makes this point that you shouldn't be seduced by this appearance of Jewish law saying love thy neighbor. They are well aware that this is basically impossible you know it's an impossible commandment that basically he notes very nicely in this Lacan how all the commandments are basically commandments destined to keep the neighbor at a proper distance you know like it's a murderous moment when the neighbor comes too close to you. So again and even today I claim we have the last echo of this and maybe you were talking about this before like role of Big Other blah blah blah maybe I have my doubts but maybe this is a possible reading of today's racism even because it's true that the let's call it performative symbolic power of social rules prohibitions is in decline and remember in Jewish tradition and Christian the point of these rules is precisely to keep the neighbor at a proper distance. What happens if this rule no longer properly works is that the neighbor comes too close and then this is a very simplified not even explanation just a description and then the point is that then you feel threatened by the neighbor and then you know because as Miller developed following Lacan already is how who is the neighbor for example for European racists Jews are the neighbors for Zionists in Israel Palestinians are obviously the neighbor. The neighbor is this ambiguity of a threat to you but at the same time some excessive enjoyment which somehow it's inaccessible to you and so on and that type and if you want to get an idea of neighbor neighbor is an alien basically. In what sense? Precisely in sense of radically another species you cannot overlap. Where do you find this nicely? I quoted this in some of my early books the example is the sacred one from my own family life, my mother, very a nice lady she was a friend with an old nice Jewish lady but once something happened which shocked me. This old Jewish lady visited my mother when I was there and I don't even know who borrowed money from whom and there were no problems with money I mean just one was returning money to each other nothing. But then this Jewish lady left and my mother told me I love this old lady but nonetheless did you notice with what strange intensity she was counting the money? And all the anti-Semitism was there you know like Jews my God it was too much intensity there whatever no? And my theory is that this is how our everyday racism today often functions you know you don't we are officially all liberals but there is usually a "but" like I've often spoken with my friends in Paris who told me we love Algerians and Arabs but just their music is a bit damn too just just they smell bad one version is they smell bad they don't wash themselves enough their music is too loud this is also a standard in United States you know I love blacks but the boom boxes you know and the music they play. Or another one is their food doesn't smell nice you know. There is this tiny feature which kind of you experience as intruding. And I claim that the logic here is exactly the same as that in I love them do you know those horror movies the model one of them the best known is Invasion of the Body Snatchers where you know strangers are among us and that's always the catch they look and act like us but there is then always a tiny feature which allows you to recognize them. A strange glitz color in their eyes or one of the popular things is they have usually too much skin here between fingers or the way they ears are turned whatever. But the point is almost like us but just a tiny detail which makes them totally other. This is the neighbor for Lacan this other who is close to you but close to you in once in one of my books I did a theory of a neighbor propos train stations if you know Germany in Hamburg. In Hamburg you have three main train stations. One is the central one there another one I forgot another one was it was basically a class distinction it's very irrational because in Hamburg you have like four five hundred yards from each other two big train stations okay it was explained to me one was for ordinary people the other was for emperor rich people visiting Hamburg. But then mysteriously there is another three four miles five kilometers North in a part of the city suburb called Altona Hamburg-Altona and you know there is a big mystery about etymology of this name Altona and although it sounds like a joke most linguists agree that Altona comes from All-zu-Nah, all too close. Why? Because this was hundreds of years ago the seat of a Danish minority you know Hamburg is not today and the idea is even if they are way out there they're always too close you know it's the same mystique as for the Nazis propos Jews you know the more you kill them the more too many of them remain. Yes. But proximity space is precisely where fantasy resides, right? Yeah yeah. So then I know you're opposed to applied ethics and all of like any kind of... No but my point would be this notion of Lacanian traversing a fantasy because neighbor is in occupying the space of the real and is you know the Freudian thing. So is your proposal one whereby we actually encourage some kind of authentic submersion into the realness of the other or how do you keep at bay because some proximity is is necessary? No I want no no no I definitely I think that first the first thing to admit is I'm not preaching paradise I'm not preaching that this is not Lacanian this is naive humanist that oh in an authentic society we are all just open to each other and so on. But here I am for historicity still I find it so fascinating how much when the space the most elementary spatial coordinates when do you feel overwhelmed by the other are I hate this word but I will use it culturally determined. Here you can draw a nice opposition between Japan and United States. For me a symbol of United States and I like the country is did you see the movie but I don't like Kubrick but nonetheless it's interesting movie no Shining. There is United States one family three of them in a mega big hotel it's still crowded they start killing each other you know. On the other hand it is true I was fascinated how in Japan okay there is a big theoretical debate are Japanese human or are they aliens no but I love them why? Because you know they are so absurdly crowded at least they were when I was there to order the subway carts in no. But magically you learn how I mean you can be literally squeezed by others and somehow you don't feel your privacy invaded which is why don't be afraid I find prostitution disgusting I never did it I cannot even imagine doing it but nonetheless what I mentioned to some of you privately I think the most interesting form of not even full prostitution that I heard about and I saw some photos they are not pornographic don't be afraid is the Japanese one you know what they do it's so crazy. You have it's not even prostitution place they park somewhere a subway car and then you know what is the dream of ordinary shy people that it's nice to be in a very crowded train so that then if there are some girls there you can in an unnoticed way touch them squeeze their asses whatever you want so you pay for this you go men all go into a car with women and it's all crowded then they put the sounds as if shaking it as if the train is moving and you just squeeze them and pretend nobody the girls are paid not to notice it you can just squeeze them and touch them and so on. It's so it's vulgar but so gently absurd you know that I almost like it there is something you know why I like it because I was told it's strictly not a foreplay it's not that then you know you like especially a girl you give her a hint and they have rooms ready there there are no rooms ready there this is all. In a way I must say I like it. But again it's shocking to what and another I mentioned Shining because it's also I think a wonderful example of neighbor Stephen King the writer himself was right basically I think when he he was opposed to the film he said it's not a bad film but there is a big mistake and he is right the name of this mistake is Jack Nicholson. Why? He said that the whole point of my novel it's a very in the sense of the second Lacan the structuralist one that the evil is purely structural there the house the place is evil so his entire point is that you take an ordinary friendly guy and because of the house the place he gets slowly crazy and stop and slowly slowly and the end starts killing you know but he said the moment Jack Nicholson with his smile enters you know who is fear madman no no need for a gradual change there you know. I think so my point is that the way Stephen King authenticly meant it you know he was right that this is neighbor you know when you experience a neighbor didn't it happen to you unfortunately it did happen to me sometimes it in good sense mostly in the bad sense you know that you are with a friend someone whom you knew for decades you think you know and then all of a sudden it's a terrifying moment the guy does something usually unfortunately it's something vulgar a brutal cruel remark or what which totally shatters you my God is this the guy whom I thought I knew how could he have blah blah blah at that point the other becomes the neighbor that's the neighbor and no Lacan is... Sorry yes... So this is I mean like you talk about it in that essay on Love Thy Neighbor no thanks... Yeah yeah... And in lots of places and I'm always struck by... This is a criticism gentle between the lines reading change poetry. I'm always struck by the the way that these eruptions of the real in
Other as the secret, secret Big Other more in the theological sense which controls and so on, links the Big Other which runs the show and Big Other not as a secret master but as an agency of surface, that innocent gaze for whom appearances should be maintained. And again, as I emphasized, I think that it's much more subversive to undermine appearances. For example, maybe you know this story, but it's a favorite one so fuck you I mean if you did it. What's my idea to make better, this is a nice example of how to sustain yourself you need another sucker as it were to believe for you. Here I had a nice debate long ago with some theologians who of course they were not convinced, but I still insist on it that when people say oh we have an innate tendency to believe, no we need someone to believe even if it's to believe for us. I wanted to mention namely Roberto Benigni, you saw Life is Beautiful, no? I hate the movie although I agree with the principle which is and in these crazy times when people are losing sense of irony when I said that it's deeply significant that the only true film about Holocaust that you can make is a comedy, I was as you can imagine accused of oh you are making fun of us, tragedy and so on. No, my point is on the contrary that it's an obscenity, it would have been for two reasons an obscenity to make a Holocaust story into a tragedy. Why? Because, and that's a very fine point made already by Lacan, for you to play the role of a tragic subject a certain two conditions have to be met. A, a certain minimal dignity, you know, which let's say I'm tortured or at least terrorized under a court, but I'm still in a position to do that heroic oh shoot it I better die than to than to submit, you know, this kind of heroic stance. But you know in Auschwitz and so on things were so terrifying that you were simply deprived of this very space. You couldn't play a hero in Auschwitz. The conditions were so horrible that to render the absurd of it the only way is a comedy. Again you got my point. If you if you were to portray let's say a heroic confrontation between a resisting Jew and the usual bad SS officer in Auschwitz, you would be way too kind towards the Nazis. Because precisely the guy who likes to be ill when he should have come here Giorgio Agamben, no? He developed this nicely in his book Remnants of Auschwitz or what no. How you know the so-called Muslims, the living dead in Auschwitz. This is the product of Auschwitz. You know what he calls Muslims and it's a wonderful irony because mostly they were Jews you know. And it's also a wonderful example of a subject supposed to believe. Namely in Auschwitz and at some other camps there were, you know who explained it to me, I'm sorry if you know the story, Agnes Heller who was a pupil of Georg Lukács the great Hungarian Marxist who is a little bit over old-fashioned half-forgotten today but I know people who knew him. I mean he died in the sixties, his big period was the early twenties. But he was this kind of a wonderful person at the same time a radical leftist communist but as to his subjective attitude this you know the middle-European intellectual at his best. And he was personally absolutely honest and so on. For example although he was at some point almost official party philosopher in '56 you know when there was the dissident anti-communist rebellion in Prague, he joined Imre Nagy, the government, he was there even a minister for culture. And he risked his life because later he was of course like others arrested by Soviet police later. And this is the first wonderful story. I knew a biographer of him from Hungary who made him and knew him very well and he told me when Russian KGB agents come when rebellion was squashed in Budapest to arrest him, they, isn't this a wonderful naive gesture, they asked him please give us any weapons that you have. You know what he did? He took his pen, that's the only weapon I have. I mean it's so naively beautifully European, you know. And so and he was so honest. I heard this myth that when then later they didn't shoot him when they made a trial against Imre Nagy and other leading rebels or whatever because they they of course Soviet Union secret police was listening taping their their phone conversations. And they learned from them that Lukács was the leftist line within dissident government that he often argued let's not abandon socialism we just want a more open socialism let's not drop out of Warsaw and so on. So they told him listen this is not Stalinism Russians, we don't want you to lie we knew from our transcriptions of your phones what your position was there, we just want you to say that you know the truth. But this is wonderful. He said if you release Imre Nagy the prime minister of dissidents out of prison and if he is guaranteed freedom and if you arrange a meeting between him and me in a well-known central central how do you call it patisserie sweet store for cakes cafeteria in Budapest a meeting there then I promise you that I will tell him everything but not in a court and he insisted to the end he was again thrown out of party and so on. So my point is the following one. I didn't lose my track. But yes nonetheless something interesting that you should learn. He was this typical old-style Marxist aesthetic for whom literature was the only this heroic real thing. Like you know he has absolutely no sense this the other one Agnes Heller who was his probably mistress and for at least assistant when she was young but now she is a serious philosopher very old now of course she told me that once she tried to seduce him theoretically into painting so she showed him the big philosopher some Picasso reproductions. And Lukács's reaction was you know this ridiculous one of common-sense people, every child could do this what is this and so on you know. So what Agnes Heller now more seriously told me is something very precise and very tragic beautiful. She was in Auschwitz like the serious one, you know it. I saw she was even discreet no she didn't boast it like oh see my numbers there tattooed but she was there and she told me something beautiful. Again there were three two types and some acts of people in a really rough concentration camp which was Auschwitz. You should make a crucial distinction between Auschwitz and Arbeitslager, work camps like Dachau. In Dachau you had a chance to survive more or less you know. Auschwitz and so on were killing them. She told me two types. One were survivalists, you just did everything to survive. And even here, that's beautiful detail, there were unwritten rules. Like let's say sorry don't take it personally me and you are there. I go to the toilet and am stupid enough to leave that little piece of bread of mine there on the table. You are allowed to, I'm stupid I was stupid you are but for example if I'm eating it you are not allowed to beat me and you know what I mean. Like but nonetheless with all these minimal rules there were again limits, rules, it was a cruel survivalist regime. But and then there were Muslims, the living dead. You know why? Because of European racism. The usual idea standard at that time of Muslims was that these are people totally totally resigned to their fate who just pray and do like that and when you break down in camp and you just not even want to survive you just vegetate you behaved like that so the nickname Muselmänner, Muslims, was in use for them. They were the living dead in the sense of as long as they were they were still alive but without this minimal minimal will even to survive they just didn't care. You know and Agamben is right I checked with some other documentaries who told me that for example when American TV no sorry it was not TV movie journalists you remember entered some of the camps from the West also and then Dachau and so on on and on you get that's easy you get all those heaps thousands of corpses no? But they were too horrified to shoot Muslims. There are just a couple of movie shots of Muslims, this living dead mostly in the background like you have to look it was too traumatic to to put the camera on them. So but now comes the crucial point she told me that in every unit, barrack, there was a myth. First she thought it's specific to her unit but then she told me that she learned because when you are out on work detail working you of course talk a little bit with others that it was practically in all units there was a myth that not in your barrack but usually in some nearby house barrack there is someone who retained his full human dignity who is not yet a Muslim sorry not even a survivalist you know the guy who is still helping others and so on like who didn't but she told me then the truly tragic thing that as a rule then something crazy happened on some work detail or whatever out it happened sooner or later that you met that guy from the nearby barrack and of course what happened then is that you usually established that it was a myth that they are exactly the same shit like you survivalists and so on and now comes the crucial thing at that point people broke down and become Muslims. So the the tragic beauty of this is that even to be a survivalist, a brutal egotist survivalist, you still need a belief that out there there is someone who is more than you. You know when you lose that point of reference you break down completely. And I think this is deeply true even psychologically. I don't believe that a totally cynical egotist position is even possible. I claim even if you look at the filthiest gangster torturers you will always find some myth you know like oh I'm really doing it for my kids for my family I love this that. Everyone has a warm heart you know which is why I think it's bullshit it doesn't matter it's it's no excuse as it were you know. And again this is a nice example of transposed belief how it doesn't matter if you believe what matters for you to retain your sanity is that there should be another about whom you believe that he's thing. We all need a naive other. And today I found this now quarter of an hour ago when I was checking the email about some book which is even no and I read about it how we are all superstitious and it's even an interesting book it refers to all these daily practices that even if we are cynics you know we believe from these most ordinary cases like for example you watch football soccer whatever at home and you shout there you know it's this is a nice example of magical everyday magical thinking. You do gestures which in practice demonstrate that you secretly believe that in this way you can influence the outcome although you are alone at home but you do it and so on and so on. And here that would be my idea of historicity different figures of the Big Other. Here maybe Americans have a problem I will not go too much into it. I noticed something which as far as I know is specific to the United States correct me if I'm wrong maybe I'm wrong. But usually I check it I often find myself in hotels with more than floors then you know what I am talking about. In American hotels always they skip the 13th floor no it's and But I always ask myself a strange question whom are they cheating? But doesn't God know you would say if there is an evil bad luck there must be some spiritual agency God or evil demon who deals with but that agency which condemned the 13th whom you prevent but doesn't he know that is really like whom are you cheating you know. This is very this is basically very enigmatic for me you know as I quoted I think no is it in this book yes the last big fat one. Another nice example and these are differences in Big Other for example it happened to me and a friend of mine when Mladen Dolar when four years ago I think three or four we were in Harvard giving a talk and then I hate these rituals after the talk we were invited out to dinner and some with some academics who were we didn't know very well each other so the guy who organized it said okay now the same boring I'm still sorry for it ritual as me yesterday with you let's all present ourselves to each other but in much nastier way he said can each of us just briefly state your profession I mean where are you employed if you are your field of work this is my level and then he added something that I find obscene that I would never have done with all my bad taste jokes and then he said and your sexual orientation like are you gay are you this are you that. I mean we were me and my friend we were simply shocked you know like how can you know I a my automatic idea but then I remember that you don't make jokes with Americans here too much was to say something just to provoke them of course a lie but a ridiculous lie to make brutally fun of it like I only can do it with young children but I must be less than six years and you some total nonsense like this you know but okay then but then we got it my friend of and me how it's much more complex. Yes Americans can do this but at the same time if you go to at least North American beaches topless is strictly prohibited you don't do it while in Europe even under dark communism all around somewhere in the late sixties early seventies even in ex-Yugoslavia everywhere it become a rule it's not a problem. It's simply not noticed. The I don't know I may be like in a sexist way vulgar the only one who does wear a bra and so on are usually old women who are afraid to show that they don't have beautiful breasts to be vulgar. It's almost a standard. Now something happened here a friend of us it's Eric Santner my good friend I mean you can tell you who from Chicago visited us there went to a beach with us and he was so terrorized you know all these breasts around him even personally attacked and so on and then we tried to develop but we didn't get a good one a theory how you know it's too easy to blame just the stupid Americans but how totally how in what a different way the limit is posited you know that in United States it often happened to me it's embarrassingly open in the sense of publicly admitting I'm gay even friends talked to me about their sexual practices I found it embarrassing I cannot but when you come to for example on a beach being being topless they they get even here in even if you compare for example if you go to sauna sauna how do you call it no and in Germany for example they are bisexual open and you don't do orgies there it's simply considered normal nothing. But mostly as far as I know in the States and elsewhere it's separated no? So again okay but I don't want to lose time here too much what I want to say is that let's return to this problem of how again how how appearance matters how and yes Benigni comes Life is Beautiful why do I hate that movie? Because I think it's a hypocritical movie which the trick of the movie is its as it were allegorical dimension it plays with us the viewers exactly the same game as within the film the father Roberto Benigni plays with his boy. You know the story no father and son are sent to Auschwitz and there to in order to enable the son to survive the horror father tells him a bullshit story no that this is not really a prison they voluntarily went there if you survive that you can we can leave at any point you want but if you are heroic enough to stay there at the end you will get a big prize it's all just a free competition and so on and so on no. That's the story and what I claim is that the way Auschwitz is presented to us viewers in the film with all the jokes funny side it's basically the same game it presents us a nice story to be able to endure Auschwitz but my point is this one would you agree or not that the way to make a much better film even a much more well if I use in more neutral way now the term tragic or terrifying. Just you know the film you know what happens at the end that's why I hate the movie at the end you are not supposed to laugh at the end you cry remember when father is shot and then in a voice-over the last scene son at home he says only now I can see my father's sacrifice blah blah blah blah. This is I think where the movie goes wrong an authentic desperate movie something should have happened something nothing obscene in my style not a big rain but something very elementary. What if and it would be even very realistic what if just before the father is shot the son were to discover no the father who heroically sacrifices himself for the son the father were to discover that the son knew it all the time the reality that Auschwitz is not a set for a big game hunger game or whatever you would call it today but just death camp but just that the son was also caring and loving like his father and just pretended to be naive to make it easier for his father no. Admit it that this would make all situation much more authentically tragic I don't know how to how to say no. And that's why I hate the movie that's why I think it's false. And I have general problem with Roberto Benigni I like him in his early movies where he is simply evil bad-taste jokes like did you see that was it Jim Jarmusch or what Night on Earth that taxi driver in Rome that's my guy sorry. A seen-as-racist taxi. Sorry? A seen-as-racist taxi. Yeah but why why exactly a racist and not I mean you cannot be a non-racist and my friend I mean exactly so what I want to say is that but then what I really hate is how then at a certain point precisely with La vita bella Benigni I claim experienced a need to show but I'm not just bad I'm it's just a game all that I'm really a good warm caring guy like you that's the end I claim. This is why he went his lowest point was then Pinocchio which is the ultimate but not only it totally failed but even politically it was a scandal. You know why when the movie was made to get an Oscar it didn't work so Benigni made a compromise and went to visit Berlusconi and got Berlusconi's help. The Berlusconi ordered his newspapers to write positive reviews the movie to be shown in own in cinema theaters movie theaters owned by Berlusconi to get it a boost and so on and so on. This so you know which movie is for me much better if you saw it a concentration camp comedy because it is also this brutal humor and you also have a point at the end where you no longer laugh but what you get there it's not this melodrama sentimental tears you get total despair. Did you see was it Liliana Cavani or Lina Wertmüller I always confuse them with Giancarlo Giannini Pasqualino Settebellezze. It's a wonderful movie of this type of Italian seducing guy Sicilian no who is again finds himself in Auschwitz and the capo is a horrible fat blonde cruel German woman and he gets the point that the way to survive is to seduce her and then it has the most disgusting sexual act and so on all these but then at the end when he does survive but all people around him are killed nothing sentimental you just get total despair you know like he survived but as a nobody it's much more a much more I think a much more authentic tragic film. So okay let's stop with this and let's go on with Big Other. This is nonetheless only one aspect of the Big Other. I began I began at with this idea of how the Big Other in Lacan how Lacan always reformulates changes his position and so on I think precisely that again the Big Other is an exemplary case but also an exemplary case of what you cannot simply say at the end he found the true position or what. Somehow you have to maintain all these passages. Namely if you look at early Lacan even the first seminar Seminar I Freud's Technical Writings there the Big Other is not yet the symbolic order. The Big Other is simply the other in intersubjectivity but the authentic other. Lacan's idea is very simple in everyday life we have this mirror-like communication between small others like what we imagine to be our imaginary identity and the task of analysis is to break from this non-authentic mirror relationship to my authentic subjectivity talking to the other Lacan even uses a very traditional metaphysical expression beyond the wall of language like to reach there what is behind that's Lacan's original other Big Other. Then and he even gives very nice examples which are pertinent to the end of this dimension of the other beyond the wall of language he takes the example of performative statements and promises you know like I promise that I tell the truth I love you whatever but he says like the moment we are in language there is always a doubt you are telling me this by why do you you know you never know the other. This is then only then massively in one year in second Lacan's second seminar Seminar number two then it's a total shift Big Other becomes the Big Other in the standard structural sense in the sense of an anonymous symbolic mechanism which really runs the show. Exemplary is here you must know it Edgar Allan Poe's story The Purloined Letter and Lacan's interpretation of it which is this classic structuralist interpretation there is a famous passage in Lacan when he says that the lesson of this Edgar Allan Poe story is that even when we think that we are as us us acting sorry freely these are just imaginary illusions in reality the Big Other runs the show and our imaginary free identities what you freely think you are are just imaginary illusions so in this sense then the goal of psychoanalytic treatment becomes simply to dispel the imaginary illusion and to be able to formulate your structural role how are you over-determined by a symbolic structure. So again this is the let's call it Lévi-Straussian other a kind of objective symbolic structure and as such it's unconscious you are not even aware of it but it totally over-determines what you do the meanings of it and so on and so on. Then as you hinted before then complications began because at for like one two three years Lacan was flirting with this radical structuralist position we are just imaginary puppets symbolic anonymous symbolic order is ruling pulling the strings. Do you agree with this? Sorry? Do you agree with this? Of course not but my point is that Lacan immediately disagreed with himself you know because then Lacan got something else namely that this structure is necessarily inconsistent antagonistic inoperative failed and so has a status of semblance of an illusion structural and everything changes with this. How can we see this? For example you know Lacan one of his big phrases is there is no other of the other. He simply means that the Big Other isn't as it were reflexively caught in itself to guarantee its consistency it's inconsistent open symbolic order doesn't have a master or consistency which controlled it. Now again you should ask yourself the usual question which is but who is the idiot who claims that there is the other an other of the other? Well Lacan himself in his third seminar on psychosis where for Lacan what he calls the name of the father the fundamental metaphor which you have to assume to enter symbolic order is precisely the other of the other the master signifier which is why later it's absolutely crucial that Lacan denounces father paternal authority as as illusory as a fake and so on and so on. So what I want to say is that and yes with this when objective symbolic structure becomes inconsistent at that point the other from the beginning re-emerges but in a way the other which is this the otherness of the abyss of subjectivity but in a much more radical way even in theological terms as the neighbor. And as Lacan knows very well the neighbor in Judeo-Christian tradition and this is what for Lacan makes it great the neighbor is not the fellow out there who is like me no the neighbor is precisely the terrifying other the abyss I never you know the neighbor is the other about whom I never know what he really wants who remains out there. For example this is why in a beautiful re-reading of Decalogue and so on Lacan makes this point that you shouldn't be seduced by this appearance of Jewish law saying love thy neighbor. They are well aware that this is basically impossible you know it's an impossible commandment that basically he notes very nicely in this Lacan how all the commandments are basically commandments destined to keep the neighbor at a proper distance you know like it's a murderous moment when the neighbor comes too close to you. So again and even today I claim we have the last echo of this and maybe you were talking about this before like role of Big Other blah blah blah maybe I have my doubts but maybe this is a possible reading of today's racism even because it's true that the let's call it performative symbolic power of social rules prohibitions is in decline and remember in Jewish tradition and Christian the point of these rules is precisely to keep the neighbor at a proper distance. What happens if this rule no longer properly works is that the neighbor comes too close and then this is a very simplified not even explanation just a description and then the point is that then you feel threatened by the neighbor and then you know because as Miller developed following Lacan already is how who is the neighbor for example for European racists Jews are the neighbors for Zionists in Israel Palestinians are obviously the neighbor. The neighbor is this ambiguity of a threat to you but at the same time some excessive enjoyment which somehow it's inaccessible to you and so on and that type and if you want to get an idea of neighbor neighbor is an alien basically. In what sense? Precisely in sense of radically another species you cannot overlap. Where do you find this nicely? I quoted this in some of my early books the example is the sacred one from my own family life, my mother, very a nice lady she was a friend with an old nice Jewish lady but once something happened which shocked me. This old Jewish lady visited my mother when I was there and I don't even know who borrowed money from whom and there were no problems with money I mean just one was returning money to each other nothing. But then this Jewish lady left and my mother told me I love this old lady but nonetheless did you notice with what strange intensity she was counting the money? And all the anti-Semitism was there you know like Jews my God it was too much intensity there whatever no? And my theory is that this is how our everyday racism today often functions you know you don't we are officially all liberals but there is usually a "but" like I've often spoken with my friends in Paris who told me we love Algerians and Arabs but just their music is a bit damn too just just they smell bad one version is they smell bad they don't wash themselves enough their music is too loud this is also a standard in United States you know I love blacks but the boom boxes you know and the music they play. Or another one is their food doesn't smell nice you know. There is this tiny feature which kind of you experience as intruding. And I claim that the logic here is exactly the same as that in I love them do you know those horror movies the model one of them the best known is Invasion of the Body Snatchers where you know strangers are among us and that's always the catch they look and act like us but there is then always a tiny feature which allows you to recognize them. A strange glitz color in their eyes or one of the popular things is they have usually too much skin here between fingers or the way they ears are turned whatever. But the point is almost like us but just a tiny detail which makes them totally other. This is the neighbor for Lacan this other who is close to you but close to you in once in one of my books I did a theory of a neighbor propos train stations if you know Germany in Hamburg. In Hamburg you have three main train stations. One is the central one there another one I forgot another one was it was basically a class distinction it's very irrational because in Hamburg you have like four five hundred yards from each other two big train stations okay it was explained to me one was for ordinary people the other was for emperor rich people visiting Hamburg. But then mysteriously there is another three four miles five kilometers North in a part of the city suburb called Altona Hamburg-Altona and you know there is a big mystery about etymology of this name Altona and although it sounds like a joke most linguists agree that Altona comes from All-zu-Nah, all too close. Why? Because this was hundreds of years ago the seat of a Danish minority you know Hamburg is not today and the idea is even if they are way out there they're always too close you know it's the same mystique as for the Nazis propos Jews you know the more you kill them the more too many of them remain. Yes. But proximity space is precisely where fantasy resides, right? Yeah yeah. So then I know you're opposed to applied ethics and all of like any kind of... No but my point would be this notion of Lacanian traversing a fantasy because neighbor is in occupying the space of the real and is you know the Freudian thing. So is your proposal one whereby we actually encourage some kind of authentic submersion into the realness of the other or how do you keep at bay because some proximity is is necessary? No I want no no no I definitely I think that first the first thing to admit is I'm not preaching paradise I'm not preaching that this is not Lacanian this is naive humanist that oh in an authentic society we are all just open to each other and so on. But here I am for historicity still I find it so fascinating how much when the space the most elementary spatial coordinates when do you feel overwhelmed by the other are I hate this word but I will use it culturally determined. Here you can draw a nice opposition between Japan and United States. For me a symbol of United States and I like the country is did you see the movie but I don't like Kubrick but nonetheless it's interesting movie no Shining. There is United States one family three of them in a mega big hotel it's still crowded they start killing each other you know. On the other hand it is true I was fascinated how in Japan okay there is a big theoretical debate are Japanese human or are they aliens no but I love them why? Because you know they are so absurdly crowded at least they were when I was there to order the subway carts in no. But magically you learn how I mean you can be literally squeezed by others and somehow you don't feel your privacy invaded which is why don't be afraid I find prostitution disgusting I never did it I cannot even imagine doing it but nonetheless what I mentioned to some of you privately I think the most interesting form of not even full prostitution that I heard about and I saw some photos they are not pornographic don't be afraid is the Japanese one you know what they do it's so crazy. You have it's not even prostitution place they park somewhere a subway car and then you know what is the dream of ordinary shy people that it's nice to be in a very crowded train so that then if there are some girls there you can in an unnoticed way touch them squeeze their asses whatever you want so you pay for this you go men all go into a car with women and it's all crowded then they put the sounds as if shaking it as if the train is moving and you just squeeze them and pretend nobody the girls are paid not to notice it you can just squeeze them and touch them and so on. It's so it's vulgar but so gently absurd you know that I almost like it there is something you know why I like it because I was told it's strictly not a foreplay it's not that then you know you like especially a girl you give her a hint and they have rooms ready there there are no rooms ready there this is all. In a way I must say I like it. But again it's shocking to what and another I mentioned Shining because it's also I think a wonderful example of neighbor Stephen King the writer himself was right basically I think when he he was opposed to the film he said it's not a bad film but there is a big mistake and he is right the name of this mistake is Jack Nicholson. Why? He said that the whole point of my novel it's a very in the sense of the second Lacan the structuralist one that the evil is purely structural there the house the place is evil so his entire point is that you take an ordinary friendly guy and because of the house the place he gets slowly crazy and stop and slowly slowly and the end starts killing you know but he said the moment Jack Nicholson with his smile enters you know who is fear madman no no need for a gradual change there you know. I think so my point is that the way Stephen King authenticly meant it you know he was right that this is neighbor you know when you experience a neighbor didn't it happen to you unfortunately it did happen to me sometimes it in good sense mostly in the bad sense you know that you are with a friend someone whom you knew for decades you think you know and then all of a sudden it's a terrifying moment the guy does something usually unfortunately it's something vulgar a brutal cruel remark or what which totally shatters you my God is this the guy whom I thought I knew how could he have blah blah blah at that point the other becomes the neighbor that's the neighbor and no Lacan is... Sorry yes... So this is I mean like you talk about it in that essay on Love Thy Neighbor no thanks... Yeah yeah... And in lots of places and I'm always struck by... This is a criticism gentle between the lines reading change poetry. I'm always struck by the the way that these eruptions of the real in
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the neighbor they're always really... um... there's always a sort of a slippage between the their being horrifying as eruptions of the real and their being horrifying as things that keep getting encoded as horrifying so... Could you be more precise I don't want to miss the point... Yeah... So the the ugliness of the real when it erupts there's a slippage between its ugliness and its structural character as real erupting... Yeah but don't you think that this ugliness is always partially structural? In what sense? Can I give you a proof sorry
the neighbor they're always really... um... there's always a sort of a slippage between the their being horrifying as eruptions of the real and their being horrifying as things that keep getting encoded as horrifying so... Could you be more precise I don't want to miss the point... Yeah... So the the ugliness of the real when it erupts there's a slippage between its ugliness and its structural character as real erupting... Yeah but don't you think that this ugliness is always partially structural? In what sense? Can I give you a proof sorry
Slavoj Žižek
can I give you a proof and then I will give you back the word sorry an elementary proof which I also used many times but it's so vulgar that I like it. The empirical proof how we are not talking about about here about horror but more about simple disgust. Look I warn you it is disgusting but very innocent. Imagine you all the time swallow your saliva no problem okay do something take an empty glass and spit a lot of your saliva into it the moment it's out it becomes disgusting a proof try to drink it again I cannot it's totally but you see how it's purely structural rational you know my God seconds ago it was in my mouth I didn't have any problems but the moment it's out you know. So I think this is pretty pretty radical even some theorists developed disgust strictly along the lines of the Freudian unheimlich as disgust is not oh my God alien so foreign no disgust is always something from inside you which is externalized you know it's never simply outside radical otherness incommensurability and so on is never disgusting. Even when we have animals and I'm here a scared guy a coward absolutely I mean if
can I give you a proof and then I will give you back the word sorry an elementary proof which I also used many times but it's so vulgar that I like it. The empirical proof how we are not talking about about here about horror but more about simple disgust. Look I warn you it is disgusting but very innocent. Imagine you all the time swallow your saliva no problem okay do something take an empty glass and spit a lot of your saliva into it the moment it's out it becomes disgusting a proof try to drink it again I cannot it's totally but you see how it's purely structural rational you know my God seconds ago it was in my mouth I didn't have any problems but the moment it's out you know. So I think this is pretty pretty radical even some theorists developed disgust strictly along the lines of the Freudian unheimlich as disgust is not oh my God alien so foreign no disgust is always something from inside you which is externalized you know it's never simply outside radical otherness incommensurability and so on is never disgusting. Even when we have animals and I'm here a scared guy a coward absolutely I mean if
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you want me to run away like crazy you just show me not even a
you want me to run away like crazy you just show me not even a
Slavoj Žižek
snake a big turtle and so on to do whatever I'm I mean like I would prefer probably to die than to eat a lobster or something like this these are horrors for me basically I hate life as such that's why I sympathize with Kirsten Dunst in von Trier's Melancholia you know where she said I know that the Earth is the only place in the universe where there is life and when the Melancholia planet will hit us it'll be good point and so on no but here also go on sorry please... So it it often feels to me that the way that you articulate that you're sort of continuing to react against it that is to say so you're bringing you're bringing your marking say the spit in the in the glass and the way that you're marking it is maintaining then the order of your body as something that is troubling oh I I want to maintain that and and I kind of find myself you know repeatedly when I'm even in these places where I'm fully persuaded by what you're saying structurally I'm distressed by by what feels like an enactment of the desire to maintain actually the structure that's kept that particular thing disgusting so very well I'm disgusted yes why why not then you know sort of proceed in a way that's that's takes that moment of of putting my spit in my glasses a ventle whatever you know as as something that sort of induces uh in the situation the chance to reconfigure my notion of where my body is and so I'm... which is actually the other possible reaction to this to what you might call then more on the radical reaction to the unheimlich but don't you think yes that maybe I think we can play a little bit with elements and so on. It's certain that it's again much of this is at the level of content again culturally over-determined like I saw recently although I hate them they are so patronizing one of those you know CNN or History Channel or whatever National Geographic documentaries about what people are eating in the world and what some thing were too much for me like somewhere in African jungle there they have big spiders by big I mean big like not this but like this no and children there and they are horrible you know with hair black and so on and you see children grabbing them and directly biting them and eating them so yes you can do things here but I claim that this is what Lacan even means by the Big Other is inconsistent and so on that gap remains. The utopia is that you will simply as it were totally open yourself to reality you know when I find even limits here when I was in Korea three weeks ago I had some private debates with some Buddhist very interesting ones and I tried to catch them it was a little bit naive you know but at the end at some point we did agree I tried evil as I am I always come there to provoke people no didn't I tell you already maybe you know the story it's not a joke what happened to me after I made those bit more provocative than Gandhi remarks in India. After I it's not a joke after I returned to Slovenia a friend of mine his wife works
snake a big turtle and so on to do whatever I'm I mean like I would prefer probably to die than to eat a lobster or something like this these are horrors for me basically I hate life as such that's why I sympathize with Kirsten Dunst in von Trier's Melancholia you know where she said I know that the Earth is the only place in the universe where there is life and when the Melancholia planet will hit us it'll be good point and so on no but here also go on sorry please... So it it often feels to me that the way that you articulate that you're sort of continuing to react against it that is to say so you're bringing you're bringing your marking say the spit in the in the glass and the way that you're marking it is maintaining then the order of your body as something that is troubling oh I I want to maintain that and and I kind of find myself you know repeatedly when I'm even in these places where I'm fully persuaded by what you're saying structurally I'm distressed by by what feels like an enactment of the desire to maintain actually the structure that's kept that particular thing disgusting so very well I'm disgusted yes why why not then you know sort of proceed in a way that's that's takes that moment of of putting my spit in my glasses a ventle whatever you know as as something that sort of induces uh in the situation the chance to reconfigure my notion of where my body is and so I'm... which is actually the other possible reaction to this to what you might call then more on the radical reaction to the unheimlich but don't you think yes that maybe I think we can play a little bit with elements and so on. It's certain that it's again much of this is at the level of content again culturally over-determined like I saw recently although I hate them they are so patronizing one of those you know CNN or History Channel or whatever National Geographic documentaries about what people are eating in the world and what some thing were too much for me like somewhere in African jungle there they have big spiders by big I mean big like not this but like this no and children there and they are horrible you know with hair black and so on and you see children grabbing them and directly biting them and eating them so yes you can do things here but I claim that this is what Lacan even means by the Big Other is inconsistent and so on that gap remains. The utopia is that you will simply as it were totally open yourself to reality you know when I find even limits here when I was in Korea three weeks ago I had some private debates with some Buddhist very interesting ones and I tried to catch them it was a little bit naive you know but at the end at some point we did agree I tried evil as I am I always come there to provoke people no didn't I tell you already maybe you know the story it's not a joke what happened to me after I made those bit more provocative than Gandhi remarks in India. After I it's not a joke after I returned to Slovenia a friend of mine his wife works
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at Slovene Foreign Ministry he told me that two weeks after my visit
at Slovene Foreign Ministry he told me that two weeks after my visit
Slavoj Žižek
there comes an official how do you call it depêche official diplomatic letter from Indian Foreign Ministry to Slovene Foreign
there comes an official how do you call it depêche official diplomatic letter from Indian Foreign Ministry to Slovene Foreign
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Ministry saying that your citizen Slavoj Žižek said in India publicly that Mahatma Gandhi is no better even worse than Hitler which I of course didn't say but okay and they said that we want to know is this his personal opinion or is it now the opinion of Slovene government and I told them to write back it's not yet the Slovene official opinion but we are thinking
Ministry saying that your citizen Slavoj Žižek said in India publicly that Mahatma Gandhi is no better even worse than Hitler which I of course didn't say but okay and they said that we want to know is this his personal opinion or is it now the opinion of Slovene government and I told them to write back it's not yet the Slovene official opinion but we are thinking
Slavoj Žižek
about you know fuck them you know no but seriously so... But seriously can you you your theory of the subject perhaps can you maintain the other qua neighbor without it costing subjective existence? What do you mean by costing limit of my life? Uh without the subject being the subject of the unconscious or the hysteric subject because I thought that was a little bit of your project in trying to distinguish Hegelian repetition from... That's a big question I want to yeah sorry please go to the end sorry I interrupted. Oh so no I don't mean to go into him but you ask the question you know what could Hegel think subjective unconscious but there's a sense in which he didn't need to because Hegel might have had a purely an subject that existed but I'm asking what's at stake and for you and if you think that maybe that's even where Lacan started if it didn't the question began to hinge not on the status of the Big Other but maintaining a subject that can exist. What do you mean by exist? I mean I'm not playing this is an absolutely crucial question. Maintain any other form of subjectivity that is not hysteria or subject of the unconscious? Yeah I see so but that is authentic that is true first okay I will give you a short answer then you can counter-attack the answer is naively yes at this level yes I don't think that we are as it were a priori constitutionally whatever you want condemned to live in a lie this is the position of some Lacanians unfortunately even Jacques-Alain Miller approaches this position now the position is as I already I think at a different political level indicated here that it is as it were in our well not natural nature but structural a priori of human universe
about you know fuck them you know no but seriously so... But seriously can you you your theory of the subject perhaps can you maintain the other qua neighbor without it costing subjective existence? What do you mean by costing limit of my life? Uh without the subject being the subject of the unconscious or the hysteric subject because I thought that was a little bit of your project in trying to distinguish Hegelian repetition from... That's a big question I want to yeah sorry please go to the end sorry I interrupted. Oh so no I don't mean to go into him but you ask the question you know what could Hegel think subjective unconscious but there's a sense in which he didn't need to because Hegel might have had a purely an subject that existed but I'm asking what's at stake and for you and if you think that maybe that's even where Lacan started if it didn't the question began to hinge not on the status of the Big Other but maintaining a subject that can exist. What do you mean by exist? I mean I'm not playing this is an absolutely crucial question. Maintain any other form of subjectivity that is not hysteria or subject of the unconscious? Yeah I see so but that is authentic that is true first okay I will give you a short answer then you can counter-attack the answer is naively yes at this level yes I don't think that we are as it were a priori constitutionally whatever you want condemned to live in a lie this is the position of some Lacanians unfortunately even Jacques-Alain Miller approaches this position now the position is as I already I think at a different political level indicated here that it is as it were in our well not natural nature but structural a priori of human universe
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that you have to live in an illusion and so on and that as Miller put it somewhere the real the authentic encounter is just a momentary event you know like ah you have like this is Antigone that's why I claim Lacan immediately dropped his reading of Antigone there for Lacan the authentic encounter is Antigone entering that space of what Lacan calls there Atè the space between the living dead neither life nor death authentic let's call it naively domain of the real you can enter it briefly but you cannot persist there like but I I tend I think this solution is too easy. Well yeah that's too easy because wouldn't that mean first what's at stake is truth doesn't have to have this structure of fiction. And this is a Structure of the Structure of fiction. Truth is fiction. Yeah well truth as fiction. Yeah yeah. And then the question that Deleuze asked in his early early work he was always asking difference does not have to go as
that you have to live in an illusion and so on and that as Miller put it somewhere the real the authentic encounter is just a momentary event you know like ah you have like this is Antigone that's why I claim Lacan immediately dropped his reading of Antigone there for Lacan the authentic encounter is Antigone entering that space of what Lacan calls there Atè the space between the living dead neither life nor death authentic let's call it naively domain of the real you can enter it briefly but you cannot persist there like but I I tend I think this solution is too easy. Well yeah that's too easy because wouldn't that mean first what's at stake is truth doesn't have to have this structure of fiction. And this is a Structure of the Structure of fiction. Truth is fiction. Yeah well truth as fiction. Yeah yeah. And then the question that Deleuze asked in his early early work he was always asking difference does not have to go as
Slavoj Žižek
far as contradiction and identity. Sounds like
far as contradiction and identity. Sounds like
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you could and then what would also be at stake in the
you could and then what would also be at stake in the
Slavoj Žižek
subjectivity proper as I truth in speaking the Freudian I truth in speaking so there's actually a lot you can't just say yes. Oh no I'm not saying just yes because you pay a mega price for this yes I know the price would be this one now I can just not because you are stupid but because we don't have time I can just give the direction. The first answer crucial by Lacan would be and my God I don't want to go too deep into it maybe we can talk later this something because I'm afraid that we are getting into this open question of Lacanian theology you know where we will be boring but it's absolutely crucial that and not all readers just some readers the best noticed this how somewhere from I would say Seminar XI around there later Lacan devalues truth. Truth is no longer the authentic thing Lacan till Seminar XI still anxiety still has this idea of opposing knowledge and truth as authentic and non-authentic. It's incidentally a very metaphysical traditional European philosophical attitude the idea being that in knowledge you are not subjectively engaged knowledge is non-authentic knowledge is I don't know I can develop a theory of torturing and so on it's objectively true it doesn't engage me but truth is subjectively engaged knowledge knowledge with as it were it's a subjective practical knowledge with an immanent ethical dimension whatever. So why is this important? Because this is the whole problem of Lacan at that stage of efficiency of psychoanalytic treatment. His idea is that of course if you are a bad patient in the sense of not really engaged you are ready to admit it like oh you are saying this dream means that I want to fuck my mother okay who cares so why not you know you admit it as knowledge but you don't really assume it it's not truth and Lacan constantly throughout the fifties and the very beginning of sixties resuscitates this very traditional philosophical topic of authentic engaged truth versus objective neutral just objective scientific knowledge. Then something weird
subjectivity proper as I truth in speaking the Freudian I truth in speaking so there's actually a lot you can't just say yes. Oh no I'm not saying just yes because you pay a mega price for this yes I know the price would be this one now I can just not because you are stupid but because we don't have time I can just give the direction. The first answer crucial by Lacan would be and my God I don't want to go too deep into it maybe we can talk later this something because I'm afraid that we are getting into this open question of Lacanian theology you know where we will be boring but it's absolutely crucial that and not all readers just some readers the best noticed this how somewhere from I would say Seminar XI around there later Lacan devalues truth. Truth is no longer the authentic thing Lacan till Seminar XI still anxiety still has this idea of opposing knowledge and truth as authentic and non-authentic. It's incidentally a very metaphysical traditional European philosophical attitude the idea being that in knowledge you are not subjectively engaged knowledge is non-authentic knowledge is I don't know I can develop a theory of torturing and so on it's objectively true it doesn't engage me but truth is subjectively engaged knowledge knowledge with as it were it's a subjective practical knowledge with an immanent ethical dimension whatever. So why is this important? Because this is the whole problem of Lacan at that stage of efficiency of psychoanalytic treatment. His idea is that of course if you are a bad patient in the sense of not really engaged you are ready to admit it like oh you are saying this dream means that I want to fuck my mother okay who cares so why not you know you admit it as knowledge but you don't really assume it it's not truth and Lacan constantly throughout the fifties and the very beginning of sixties resuscitates this very traditional philosophical topic of authentic engaged truth versus objective neutral just objective scientific knowledge. Then something weird
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happens precisely when notions
happens precisely when notions
Slavoj Žižek
of drive
of drive
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real and so on enter truth because truth for Lacan is a category of the symbolic the symbolic fiction. Truth is no longer the authentic dimension. No
real and so on enter truth because truth for Lacan is a category of the symbolic the symbolic fiction. Truth is no longer the authentic dimension. No
Slavoj Žižek
and I agree here with Lacan we should
and I agree here with Lacan we should
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keep the word authentic but it's either an anxiety or real or whatever it's no longer truth. So you would go that way towards Lacan because Badiou goes quite the other way with respect to
keep the word authentic but it's either an anxiety or real or whatever it's no longer truth. So you would go that way towards Lacan because Badiou goes quite the other way with respect to
Slavoj Žižek
the subjective element. Well you know there is a wonderful joke in I know what in Some Like
the subjective element. Well you know there is a wonderful joke in I know what in Some Like
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It Hot you know when you remember in the final scene when in Miami all gangsters meet mobsters you know Some Like It Hot Billy Wilder the mega comedy. They are preparing a plot against that Joe Gamasch or whatever the bad guy and you know the way they want to kill him is the big birthday cake and the man with a gun in it and the big mobster who has organized the killing says to him Joe we all love you here is the for your birthday the cake no? And Joe the guy says but wait a minute you are wrong my
It Hot you know when you remember in the final scene when in Miami all gangsters meet mobsters you know Some Like It Hot Billy Wilder the mega comedy. They are preparing a plot against that Joe Gamasch or whatever the bad guy and you know the way they want to kill him is the big birthday cake and the man with a gun in it and the big mobster who has organized the killing says to him Joe we all love you here is the for your birthday the cake no? And Joe the guy says but wait a minute you are wrong my
Slavoj Žižek
birthday is six months away and the big boss says well what is six months among good friends and so on and so on. So you got my point well okay Badiou is here radically in an opposite position but what is a small opposite position among good friends no? Ah this uh but there is a very serious problem here yes and I'm not here far from simply criticizing Badiou I am looking for my way here what I would say is just put this Badiou statement in context because of course to put it bluntly for Badiou knowledge is the category of being you know things the way they are truth is the category of engaged subjectivity ah here we approach the problem of the status of subject. My simple I develop it again and again problem with Badiou is that for me something is missing you have this hedonist as he calls it human animal human individual and then you have subject in the sense of fidelity to the event and so on I claim that within this logical space there simply
birthday is six months away and the big boss says well what is six months among good friends and so on and so on. So you got my point well okay Badiou is here radically in an opposite position but what is a small opposite position among good friends no? Ah this uh but there is a very serious problem here yes and I'm not here far from simply criticizing Badiou I am looking for my way here what I would say is just put this Badiou statement in context because of course to put it bluntly for Badiou knowledge is the category of being you know things the way they are truth is the category of engaged subjectivity ah here we approach the problem of the status of subject. My simple I develop it again and again problem with Badiou is that for me something is missing you have this hedonist as he calls it human animal human individual and then you have subject in the sense of fidelity to the event and so on I claim that within this logical space there simply
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is no place for the Freudian subject Freudian subject where you have categories like drive anxiety. I do know that Badiou has wonderful theories about anxiety but with drive death drive it's get complicated sometimes he often almost becomes a kind of a moralist
is no place for the Freudian subject Freudian subject where you have categories like drive anxiety. I do know that Badiou has wonderful theories about anxiety but with drive death drive it's get complicated sometimes he often almost becomes a kind of a moralist
Slavoj Žižek
you know claiming
you know claiming
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this morbid death drive late capitalist whatever. What I claim is that the lesson of psychoanalysis is very radical here. My point is here a much more crazy one maybe some of you know it and I wonder if you would agree usually Badiou is approached with and you can test this
this morbid death drive late capitalist whatever. What I claim is that the lesson of psychoanalysis is very radical here. My point is here a much more crazy one maybe some of you know it and I wonder if you would agree usually Badiou is approached with and you can test this
Slavoj Žižek
next week the guy will come here and I'm very glad to meet him because we will be doing some communist plotting about organizing the next conference on communism and so on. Usually he is accused of kind of a proto-idealist dualism we have the ordinary being order of being reality and then out of nowhere event comes isn't this a kind of a half-concealed disavowed theology. My reproach is exactly the opposite one. If there is a lesson of Freud it's not Freud was not a brutal biological reductionist. The point of Freud is not all higher human activities can be reduced to vulgar sex desire to murder whatever. It's exactly the opposite way. The problem I have with Badiou is not there is no event all events can be reduced down blah. But the opposite there is no human animal. That is to say if death drive means something it means that the way Badiou portrays describes human animal an animal just bent towards service of good utilitarian pleasure hedonism pursuit of happiness. No it's not they don't exist. The lesson of psychoanalysis is anti-American Constitution. It's no pursuit of happiness we are doing all possible to sabotage our happiness. We are beyond the pleasure principle always. So what I'm saying is that what Badiou describes as this the bad not even subject individual when he says the the subject the individual of what he calls democratic materialism just pleasures blah blah blah. I claim in a very Marxist historicist way that such an individual is a product of a very specific late capitalist conditions. There is nothing primitive natural about it or to give you another example. Here I have a conflict with Badiou I think this is why the moralistic criticism of capitalism in the sense of you know too much like this is why Catholic Church you know what is Catholic Church that well-known organization of financial speculators and pedophiles no and so on no. Their reaction to meltdown was no this is not a crisis of capitalism this is a crisis of morality and so on you know no it's totally misleading to talk about greed and so on blah blah blah. So what I want to say is this I claim that in so far as I agree with Badiou and he with me everyone let's say that the main danger the root of it all is this crazy capitalist drive to
next week the guy will come here and I'm very glad to meet him because we will be doing some communist plotting about organizing the next conference on communism and so on. Usually he is accused of kind of a proto-idealist dualism we have the ordinary being order of being reality and then out of nowhere event comes isn't this a kind of a half-concealed disavowed theology. My reproach is exactly the opposite one. If there is a lesson of Freud it's not Freud was not a brutal biological reductionist. The point of Freud is not all higher human activities can be reduced to vulgar sex desire to murder whatever. It's exactly the opposite way. The problem I have with Badiou is not there is no event all events can be reduced down blah. But the opposite there is no human animal. That is to say if death drive means something it means that the way Badiou portrays describes human animal an animal just bent towards service of good utilitarian pleasure hedonism pursuit of happiness. No it's not they don't exist. The lesson of psychoanalysis is anti-American Constitution. It's no pursuit of happiness we are doing all possible to sabotage our happiness. We are beyond the pleasure principle always. So what I'm saying is that what Badiou describes as this the bad not even subject individual when he says the the subject the individual of what he calls democratic materialism just pleasures blah blah blah. I claim in a very Marxist historicist way that such an individual is a product of a very specific late capitalist conditions. There is nothing primitive natural about it or to give you another example. Here I have a conflict with Badiou I think this is why the moralistic criticism of capitalism in the sense of you know too much like this is why Catholic Church you know what is Catholic Church that well-known organization of financial speculators and pedophiles no and so on no. Their reaction to meltdown was no this is not a crisis of capitalism this is a crisis of morality and so on you know no it's totally misleading to talk about greed and so on blah blah blah. So what I want to say is this I claim that in so far as I agree with Badiou and he with me everyone let's say that the main danger the root of it all is this crazy capitalist drive to
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profit
profit
Slavoj Žižek
and so on. But this is not the logic of human animal. This is a kind of perverted radical fidelity to even I am tempted to say a perverted a perverted event. A typical radical capitalist is not a hedonist. He is ready to ruin his life work all everything just that sorry... Isn't that also at the core of why you say that communism is already at work within capitalism that's where you differ with Badiou with respect to the subjective element. No but nonetheless things appear more refined because you know I am nonetheless not Hardt and Negri although to annoy Negri I call them hard and soft you know I cannot resist it sorry you know even my son knows these jokes you know my son the small one the evil one you know he told me this story did you know it they talk is like you know how did Bill Gates get the name Microsoft you must know it it's wonderful total vulgarity when he was a student he was a geek he was so ugly no women was ready to make love to him so he went to a prostitute and after doing it the prostitute told him yours is so micro and soft you know sorry that's my sorry but uh sorry what were you saying your second attack about uh no it wasn't an attack I was actually getting right to the point where you said something very interesting that's majorly different from Badiou is that you had said that communism is already at work within capitalism it's not as... No no no did I can you show it to me because nonetheless this is the position in its radical of Hardt and Soft guy of Hardt and Negri they even go totally crazy here they think that precisely this digital virtual purely speculative late capitalism is practically already there we have just to change the form. Oh okay I confused maybe their position with yours. Yeah yeah and no I definitely and you know what's so tragic is that they even go to the end here like the most tragic experience I have with Negri I saw one interview with him in Mestre Venezia Mestre you know the brother town just on land the double town of of Venice no they there he made an interview walking in front of a factory where workers were protesting gathered because they lost their job factory and he told to the journalist you see they are dead they don't even know it you see they are lost but not with sympathy he said that's the old working class movement that's not communism we should just forget about them and then he openly said something truly terrifying that a modern speculative Wall Street capitalist is much closer to communism than those workers and so on and so on. I I don't because you know at the end you know what what Negri did this was a little bit too much for me when there was one of the last trials no not the last one two years ago when there was one of the trials against Berlusconi Negri expressed public support for Berlusconi who is Negri says like him Negri a victim of bourgeois justice and so on. So no I don't buy this story but sorry nonetheless to finish but oh my God you are I hate you you know why because you are not stupid enough like you are asking too good questions you know. Because there are so many things to say here I don't even know okay let's stop this because one way I would like to answer you but maybe I should allow me three minutes of improvisation and then you is to to give you a wonderful example where nonetheless maybe there are utopian moments in today's capitalism. I will tell you I already sold it a couple of times but it's not yet published so I can tell it to you this story. There is a book called I forgot the name of the guy the very strange title Drive. And it's a book of some economic psychologist which is very naive but in a way wonderful. He reports on a series of experiments done by some American social psychologists they wanted to test the relationship between performativity not in linguistic sense but simply performance sorry how well you do your job and financial reimbursement. Of course the standard starting hypothesis was the better you are paid the better you will do it but then they arrived at something very weird the result was this only holds for stupid work where you are not even minimally engaged. The moment work becomes a real challenge intellectual challenge or ethical challenge that you help people they discovered something wonderful communist I would say that if you are paid little of course if you start you don't do it but then very soon just to get enough to survive modestly you do what you can do and now comes a miracle it's not only that if you are paid more you don't do it better it's you read it no if you are paid more you do it worse. It's as if you know money then acquires too much of a role and you focus on money and it ruins it. So it's a very strange result empirically demonstrating how with a certain work precisely to use the standard Marxist term the non-alienated work money can be even counter-productive in the sense that if you get paid too much you will do your work worse. And now comes the beautiful a little bit naturalizing naive move then they were honest historicists they said but what if we are making a mistake universalizing too fast what if this has something specific to do with this city American Yuppie benevolent charity capitalism so let's test it all around. They went to a very poor African country Mali I don't know which one they went to some Indian poor villages and so on and all around China the result was always the same. And isn't it beautiful it I okay let's I mean it's nonsense to say this proves communism but it does demonstrate at least something that this idea that we are egotist machines for whom it's automatic that you really just care about money blah blah is simply not true. That is to say that the standard anti-communist reproach oh you are utopians people just care about competition money it's empirically not true. Our nature is not capitalism. For intellectual work though? Sorry for intellectual work? Ah no no no no they went into this they said the point is not so much intellectual work but it's simply subjective engagement like they made the same example in some stupid sorry stupid in my racist way I love them Indian village where there were fishers and they were they paid the people to build a boat. Again if it was just a boring serial work okay you pay me better I do it better but when it was some boat which was a
and so on. But this is not the logic of human animal. This is a kind of perverted radical fidelity to even I am tempted to say a perverted a perverted event. A typical radical capitalist is not a hedonist. He is ready to ruin his life work all everything just that sorry... Isn't that also at the core of why you say that communism is already at work within capitalism that's where you differ with Badiou with respect to the subjective element. No but nonetheless things appear more refined because you know I am nonetheless not Hardt and Negri although to annoy Negri I call them hard and soft you know I cannot resist it sorry you know even my son knows these jokes you know my son the small one the evil one you know he told me this story did you know it they talk is like you know how did Bill Gates get the name Microsoft you must know it it's wonderful total vulgarity when he was a student he was a geek he was so ugly no women was ready to make love to him so he went to a prostitute and after doing it the prostitute told him yours is so micro and soft you know sorry that's my sorry but uh sorry what were you saying your second attack about uh no it wasn't an attack I was actually getting right to the point where you said something very interesting that's majorly different from Badiou is that you had said that communism is already at work within capitalism it's not as... No no no did I can you show it to me because nonetheless this is the position in its radical of Hardt and Soft guy of Hardt and Negri they even go totally crazy here they think that precisely this digital virtual purely speculative late capitalism is practically already there we have just to change the form. Oh okay I confused maybe their position with yours. Yeah yeah and no I definitely and you know what's so tragic is that they even go to the end here like the most tragic experience I have with Negri I saw one interview with him in Mestre Venezia Mestre you know the brother town just on land the double town of of Venice no they there he made an interview walking in front of a factory where workers were protesting gathered because they lost their job factory and he told to the journalist you see they are dead they don't even know it you see they are lost but not with sympathy he said that's the old working class movement that's not communism we should just forget about them and then he openly said something truly terrifying that a modern speculative Wall Street capitalist is much closer to communism than those workers and so on and so on. I I don't because you know at the end you know what what Negri did this was a little bit too much for me when there was one of the last trials no not the last one two years ago when there was one of the trials against Berlusconi Negri expressed public support for Berlusconi who is Negri says like him Negri a victim of bourgeois justice and so on. So no I don't buy this story but sorry nonetheless to finish but oh my God you are I hate you you know why because you are not stupid enough like you are asking too good questions you know. Because there are so many things to say here I don't even know okay let's stop this because one way I would like to answer you but maybe I should allow me three minutes of improvisation and then you is to to give you a wonderful example where nonetheless maybe there are utopian moments in today's capitalism. I will tell you I already sold it a couple of times but it's not yet published so I can tell it to you this story. There is a book called I forgot the name of the guy the very strange title Drive. And it's a book of some economic psychologist which is very naive but in a way wonderful. He reports on a series of experiments done by some American social psychologists they wanted to test the relationship between performativity not in linguistic sense but simply performance sorry how well you do your job and financial reimbursement. Of course the standard starting hypothesis was the better you are paid the better you will do it but then they arrived at something very weird the result was this only holds for stupid work where you are not even minimally engaged. The moment work becomes a real challenge intellectual challenge or ethical challenge that you help people they discovered something wonderful communist I would say that if you are paid little of course if you start you don't do it but then very soon just to get enough to survive modestly you do what you can do and now comes a miracle it's not only that if you are paid more you don't do it better it's you read it no if you are paid more you do it worse. It's as if you know money then acquires too much of a role and you focus on money and it ruins it. So it's a very strange result empirically demonstrating how with a certain work precisely to use the standard Marxist term the non-alienated work money can be even counter-productive in the sense that if you get paid too much you will do your work worse. And now comes the beautiful a little bit naturalizing naive move then they were honest historicists they said but what if we are making a mistake universalizing too fast what if this has something specific to do with this city American Yuppie benevolent charity capitalism so let's test it all around. They went to a very poor African country Mali I don't know which one they went to some Indian poor villages and so on and all around China the result was always the same. And isn't it beautiful it I okay let's I mean it's nonsense to say this proves communism but it does demonstrate at least something that this idea that we are egotist machines for whom it's automatic that you really just care about money blah blah is simply not true. That is to say that the standard anti-communist reproach oh you are utopians people just care about competition money it's empirically not true. Our nature is not capitalism. For intellectual work though? Sorry for intellectual work? Ah no no no no they went into this they said the point is not so much intellectual work but it's simply subjective engagement like they made the same example in some stupid sorry stupid in my racist way I love them Indian village where there were fishers and they were they paid the people to build a boat. Again if it was just a boring serial work okay you pay me better I do it better but when it was some boat which was a
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sacred
sacred
Slavoj Žižek
object whatever satisfied blah blah blah money became counter-productive even in although it was a although it was a heavy work and so on it still still thing. Again I'm not naive I'm not saying I can prove communism I'm just saying that things are not as simple as that. So again back to Badiou I think I am for his theory of human animal and of event. You know where we disagree we agree we had long conversations me and Alain about this we both agree that you cannot directly have an event that in order to as it were prepare an event what Badiou
object whatever satisfied blah blah blah money became counter-productive even in although it was a although it was a heavy work and so on it still still thing. Again I'm not naive I'm not saying I can prove communism I'm just saying that things are not as simple as that. So again back to Badiou I think I am for his theory of human animal and of event. You know where we disagree we agree we had long conversations me and Alain about this we both agree that you cannot directly have an event that in order to as it were prepare an event what Badiou
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calls evental site the site of potential event you have to have terror and anxiety there. No? Yeah. But then sometimes where we disagree is that for
calls evental site the site of potential event you have to have terror and anxiety there. No? Yeah. But then sometimes where we disagree is that for
Slavoj Žižek
Badiou for me he goes a little bit too fast the evental enthusiasm is always there and anxiety is just like retroactive shadow of the event you know anxiety is a sign that the situation is open event is possible. I'm more of a pessimist I think that anxiety here almost
Badiou for me he goes a little bit too fast the evental enthusiasm is always there and anxiety is just like retroactive shadow of the event you know anxiety is a sign that the situation is open event is possible. I'm more of a pessimist I think that anxiety here almost
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Heideggerian
Heideggerian
Slavoj Žižek
is our basic attitude as it were human. And then you can escape anxiety either by becoming human animal but that's crucial for me human animal is secondary it's already an escape it's to cover up anxiety or you unite anxiety with evental enthusiasm but no Alain agrees with this that there is no event without anxiety event without anxiety is not really an event and so on and so on. But you also wanted to say something? Yeah I think in Less Than Nothing in the chapter we're talking about now I thought your best critique of the event was this notion of the faithful subject is merely based on their gaze right? Like towards the object of the event so you proposed two additional subjective figures which would be... Which one because nonetheless do you know that again another example of like Lacan do you know that Badiou radically changed his position here in Being and Event, L'Être et l'Événement his idea is still that event includes its nomination which means an event is an event only for those who recognize themselves as subjects of this event. His example the French Revolution it's an event if you are engaged if it's your story but as he says for historians like François Furet or bourgeois liberals conservatives it's simply not an event it's just an eccentric twist pathology of French you know this big liberal historian sport where they tried to prove how you can do it in a much more efficient way the British way that the stupid French just that in other words the French Revolution is not the normal way but a pathological exception with no meaning and so on that's his position there. In a beautiful way in L'Être et l'Événement and in the book that he is doing now L'immanence des vérités Immanence of Truth he will develop this even further he nonetheless accepted that an event determines the entire field the situation with regard to which it is an event. In other words the moment or his better examples maybe the moment you have a French Revolution if you are part of our society you cannot act as if it didn't happen if you do it's already a disavowal of the event you know. It's the same as and he uses this example which is a nice one I quoted from Adorno you know that this is why Schönberg atonal music was an event of course you can go on writing in the old way like guys whom I wouldn't have any problem shooting Rachmaninoff and name there no but it's a fake it lost its innocence you know. So in other words an event determines the entire field even if you ignore it if you re... precisely because anxiety is universal. Yeah yeah exactly exactly yes. So here I think I'm not trying to play the game of I'm the bright guy but where does he respond to the death drive accusation that you impose upon him at least in writing? Because I he ignores he ignores... The the citations that you put in the book don't feel like they're well argued from his side against you. Yeah but that's a good point all I can tell you is maybe you can annoy him a little bit here then whenever I but I don't accuse him for this you know because we philosophers often do this my God these are now I am not kidding my God we are dying for it we are thinking of difficult questions and you cannot all the time be at the level you know. His answers were but again it's not irony what I will tell you now it's not his whenever I try to corner him his answer was usually this is crucial Slavoj but sorry now I have to pick up my son you know it's I'm sorry to visit it at this level you know. But it is true that he is still and that's why I admire him my God he is now in his mid-late seventies and it's a tragic predicament you know he thought my life work is done with with what she said with Logics of Worlds so he was already thinking of doing just the additional funny stuff like it's not a joke do you know the story I'm telling it to everyone because I love Alain and I told him the only true test of love is that I'm telling around dirty things about you without feeling guilty because I know we love each other you know that he was dreaming two three years ago of doing a movie on on on on on on on life of Plato but you know my joke which is not a joke you know who was supposed to play Plato? Brad Pitt. Because that movie about the death of Jesse James or what Alain liked that movie and said I want him. Then he wanted a wife for Plato he said why only Socrates has a wife who was beating him Xanthippe, Penelope Cruz and then comes the wonderful moment we debated long who should be the young Socrates who is for Alain the bad guy you know who I already mentioned it here Tom Cruise from Magnolia that's the ideal young evil Socrates and then I asked him a question but what about you your role? And he immediately answered very naively he wants to be the old wise Parmenides who comes and
is our basic attitude as it were human. And then you can escape anxiety either by becoming human animal but that's crucial for me human animal is secondary it's already an escape it's to cover up anxiety or you unite anxiety with evental enthusiasm but no Alain agrees with this that there is no event without anxiety event without anxiety is not really an event and so on and so on. But you also wanted to say something? Yeah I think in Less Than Nothing in the chapter we're talking about now I thought your best critique of the event was this notion of the faithful subject is merely based on their gaze right? Like towards the object of the event so you proposed two additional subjective figures which would be... Which one because nonetheless do you know that again another example of like Lacan do you know that Badiou radically changed his position here in Being and Event, L'Être et l'Événement his idea is still that event includes its nomination which means an event is an event only for those who recognize themselves as subjects of this event. His example the French Revolution it's an event if you are engaged if it's your story but as he says for historians like François Furet or bourgeois liberals conservatives it's simply not an event it's just an eccentric twist pathology of French you know this big liberal historian sport where they tried to prove how you can do it in a much more efficient way the British way that the stupid French just that in other words the French Revolution is not the normal way but a pathological exception with no meaning and so on that's his position there. In a beautiful way in L'Être et l'Événement and in the book that he is doing now L'immanence des vérités Immanence of Truth he will develop this even further he nonetheless accepted that an event determines the entire field the situation with regard to which it is an event. In other words the moment or his better examples maybe the moment you have a French Revolution if you are part of our society you cannot act as if it didn't happen if you do it's already a disavowal of the event you know. It's the same as and he uses this example which is a nice one I quoted from Adorno you know that this is why Schönberg atonal music was an event of course you can go on writing in the old way like guys whom I wouldn't have any problem shooting Rachmaninoff and name there no but it's a fake it lost its innocence you know. So in other words an event determines the entire field even if you ignore it if you re... precisely because anxiety is universal. Yeah yeah exactly exactly yes. So here I think I'm not trying to play the game of I'm the bright guy but where does he respond to the death drive accusation that you impose upon him at least in writing? Because I he ignores he ignores... The the citations that you put in the book don't feel like they're well argued from his side against you. Yeah but that's a good point all I can tell you is maybe you can annoy him a little bit here then whenever I but I don't accuse him for this you know because we philosophers often do this my God these are now I am not kidding my God we are dying for it we are thinking of difficult questions and you cannot all the time be at the level you know. His answers were but again it's not irony what I will tell you now it's not his whenever I try to corner him his answer was usually this is crucial Slavoj but sorry now I have to pick up my son you know it's I'm sorry to visit it at this level you know. But it is true that he is still and that's why I admire him my God he is now in his mid-late seventies and it's a tragic predicament you know he thought my life work is done with with what she said with Logics of Worlds so he was already thinking of doing just the additional funny stuff like it's not a joke do you know the story I'm telling it to everyone because I love Alain and I told him the only true test of love is that I'm telling around dirty things about you without feeling guilty because I know we love each other you know that he was dreaming two three years ago of doing a movie on on on on on on on life of Plato but you know my joke which is not a joke you know who was supposed to play Plato? Brad Pitt. Because that movie about the death of Jesse James or what Alain liked that movie and said I want him. Then he wanted a wife for Plato he said why only Socrates has a wife who was beating him Xanthippe, Penelope Cruz and then comes the wonderful moment we debated long who should be the young Socrates who is for Alain the bad guy you know who I already mentioned it here Tom Cruise from Magnolia that's the ideal young evil Socrates and then I asked him a question but what about you your role? And he immediately answered very naively he wants to be the old wise Parmenides who comes and
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teaches him and I love him for this you know I thought we are kidding but then at some point I noticed he's really dreaming about this you know. But there is something beautiful in it this is don't misunderstand me this is not at
teaches him and I love him for this you know I thought we are kidding but then at some point I noticed he's really dreaming about this you know. But there is something beautiful in it this is don't misunderstand me this is not at
Slavoj Žižek
all meant as making fun of
all meant as making fun of
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him I think that in today's cynical times it's wonderful if you are still able to to
him I think that in today's cynical times it's wonderful if you are still able to to
Slavoj Žižek
have this naivety or whatever you know. You know what life is simple it's running so much I I will keep my promise I already spoke with Wolfgang the days if you want but it's up to you if you will want some more debates the days that I am still here till Monday 13th if you will have some free time either like after lunch three to four or also so that you will not be too tired even if all of you don't come we can do some two three additional meetings. I again feel guilty today but okay I think this is important so tomorrow let's do it like this I will try to do not in these Lacanian theological terms but in a very basic way to go to the end with this problem of Big Other and especially I will try to answer my God you look such a nice girl but they are the worst but this is big question you know you are like those figures you have in these horror movies of Mommy can I have some sweets this nice girls and at the end of the movie you discover they are the serial killer whatever you are the intellectual counterpart. But I agree with you I hate nice girls who are just nice girls for example did you see Kieślowski's The Double Life of Veronique that beautiful actress Irène Jacob but then I met someone who knew her and he told me she is like that could never even kick a dog a beautiful girl I said thanks don't want even to hear about her I mean a woman must be evil at some level otherwise it's nothing. Okay thanks very much and so again I promise you tomorrow at least we finish first this we finish this Big Other and its crucialness because you know why because Lacan was able to think subjectivity only when the Big Other became inconsistent that's the absolutely crucial link the there is a subject in so far as the symbolic structure is inconsistent the subject of the signifier before that when Lacan didn't accept still spoke about this Big Other full subject was just imaginary illusion and so on and so on no. No no this is crucial to go into this I will not repeat myself don't be afraid from the book in the book the interesting chapter here is if you have the big fat book Less Than Nothing the chapter on Heidegger where I go into why Lacan is not a Heideggerian that is to say why knowing Heidegger very well why Lacan kept the term subject why you know he he didn't follow Heidegger in denouncing subject as modern subjectivity nihilism and so on why did Lacan keep and not only did he keep it he went even to the end this is so wonderful that in his maybe crucial seminar I think it's Logique du fantasme maybe I'm wrong he even at the end fully rehabilitated the Cartesian subject as the subject of psychoanalysis none of this bullshit Cartesian subject is rational but subject of the unconscious is some Lebensphilosophie philosophy of life stuff no no Cartesian Cogito is the subject of psychoanalysis for late Lacan I think this is absolutely absolutely crucial. But again we can debate you know what's the big difference between Lacan and Badiou here that for Alain subjectivity is rare happens here and there and for him the mistake of me Lacan not in that order from okay from down to up I mean Lacan Descartes is to universalize the subject. For Badiou we are human animals and then just from time to time rarely the miracle happens subjectivity no? So let's do let's do some of these we can then relate it even to poetry because I want to do some things about event event of sense I read now some interesting stuff although Deleuze already wrote a lot about that Japanese bullshit bullshit I love it poetry Haiku you know the structure no it's very ingenious thing the structure is very very because I like this in Argentina you have a wonderful poet you know whom I like how do you call it it's also a Slavic name Pizarnik, Pizarnik. Yeah Pizarnik. Yeah she is a really good one the one that I hate unfortunately is uh he's Pablo Neruda kind of a he writes so long poems bombastic and so on what I like about Pizarnik is precise short you know she is the one. Like my favorite writer of Argentina is Saer how do you call him Juan José Saer. Yeah yeah he is the one I think that the tragedy of Argentina is that they were too overshadowed by that shitty magical realism you know that's a big tragedy it took all it occupied all all the field no of Latino America all now admire all that Gabriel García Márquez stuff no no no I think it's a you know it's a little bit like in Sweden where Bergman is great but it's a catastrophe at the same time you know Bergman singularly almost ruined Swedish cinema I think how can you compete compete with know. Okay so see you again tomorrow thank you.
have this naivety or whatever you know. You know what life is simple it's running so much I I will keep my promise I already spoke with Wolfgang the days if you want but it's up to you if you will want some more debates the days that I am still here till Monday 13th if you will have some free time either like after lunch three to four or also so that you will not be too tired even if all of you don't come we can do some two three additional meetings. I again feel guilty today but okay I think this is important so tomorrow let's do it like this I will try to do not in these Lacanian theological terms but in a very basic way to go to the end with this problem of Big Other and especially I will try to answer my God you look such a nice girl but they are the worst but this is big question you know you are like those figures you have in these horror movies of Mommy can I have some sweets this nice girls and at the end of the movie you discover they are the serial killer whatever you are the intellectual counterpart. But I agree with you I hate nice girls who are just nice girls for example did you see Kieślowski's The Double Life of Veronique that beautiful actress Irène Jacob but then I met someone who knew her and he told me she is like that could never even kick a dog a beautiful girl I said thanks don't want even to hear about her I mean a woman must be evil at some level otherwise it's nothing. Okay thanks very much and so again I promise you tomorrow at least we finish first this we finish this Big Other and its crucialness because you know why because Lacan was able to think subjectivity only when the Big Other became inconsistent that's the absolutely crucial link the there is a subject in so far as the symbolic structure is inconsistent the subject of the signifier before that when Lacan didn't accept still spoke about this Big Other full subject was just imaginary illusion and so on and so on no. No no this is crucial to go into this I will not repeat myself don't be afraid from the book in the book the interesting chapter here is if you have the big fat book Less Than Nothing the chapter on Heidegger where I go into why Lacan is not a Heideggerian that is to say why knowing Heidegger very well why Lacan kept the term subject why you know he he didn't follow Heidegger in denouncing subject as modern subjectivity nihilism and so on why did Lacan keep and not only did he keep it he went even to the end this is so wonderful that in his maybe crucial seminar I think it's Logique du fantasme maybe I'm wrong he even at the end fully rehabilitated the Cartesian subject as the subject of psychoanalysis none of this bullshit Cartesian subject is rational but subject of the unconscious is some Lebensphilosophie philosophy of life stuff no no Cartesian Cogito is the subject of psychoanalysis for late Lacan I think this is absolutely absolutely crucial. But again we can debate you know what's the big difference between Lacan and Badiou here that for Alain subjectivity is rare happens here and there and for him the mistake of me Lacan not in that order from okay from down to up I mean Lacan Descartes is to universalize the subject. For Badiou we are human animals and then just from time to time rarely the miracle happens subjectivity no? So let's do let's do some of these we can then relate it even to poetry because I want to do some things about event event of sense I read now some interesting stuff although Deleuze already wrote a lot about that Japanese bullshit bullshit I love it poetry Haiku you know the structure no it's very ingenious thing the structure is very very because I like this in Argentina you have a wonderful poet you know whom I like how do you call it it's also a Slavic name Pizarnik, Pizarnik. Yeah Pizarnik. Yeah she is a really good one the one that I hate unfortunately is uh he's Pablo Neruda kind of a he writes so long poems bombastic and so on what I like about Pizarnik is precise short you know she is the one. Like my favorite writer of Argentina is Saer how do you call him Juan José Saer. Yeah yeah he is the one I think that the tragedy of Argentina is that they were too overshadowed by that shitty magical realism you know that's a big tragedy it took all it occupied all all the field no of Latino America all now admire all that Gabriel García Márquez stuff no no no I think it's a you know it's a little bit like in Sweden where Bergman is great but it's a catastrophe at the same time you know Bergman singularly almost ruined Swedish cinema I think how can you compete compete with know. Okay so see you again tomorrow thank you.