The Prospect Of The Post-Human
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2016-11-02 · 1:42:49 · 14,143 words
hegel-dialecticspsychoanalysisreligion-theologyphilosophy-generalsubjectivitycinema-art-cultureconsciousness-mindsexuality-gender
This is the third in a series of lectures at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, focused on the relationship between philosophy and psychoanalysis. Žižek revisits the Kant-to-Hegel shift, from epistemological obstacle to ontological impossibility, arguing that the gaps and antinomies Kant confined to the mind are constitutive of reality itself. He extends this logic to sexuality (ignorance/fantasy as structurally immanent, not contingent), to music (melody-as-kitsch versus the barred subject expressed through thwarted climax), and to Christian theology (the crucifixion as God's own self-division). A lengthy Q&A addresses the de-substantialised subject, class struggle, consciousness, artificial intelligence, and Paul's theology.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 22
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “naively materialist theology”
Žižek's label for the strand of thought (Gillian Rose, himself) that engages theology paradoxically as a non-theological materialism, finding in Christianity's self-division a materialist ontological truth.
Žižek carefully distinguishes Kant's transcendental (a priori structural conditions of experience) from the transcendent (reality as it is in itself, beyond experience), using the contrast to set up his Hegelian move.
as “epistemological obstacle to ontological impossibility”
Žižek's master formula for the Kant-to-Hegel shift: what Kant confines to our epistemic limitations (the antinomy, the gap) Hegel transposes into the structure of reality itself.
Kant's term for the necessary antinomies we fall into when we try to think reality as a totality beyond our finitude; Žižek uses it as a forerunner of ideology theory.
as “antinomy”
For Kant, the irreducible contradictions that arise when reason overreaches experience; Žižek's move is to read these not as limits of the mind but as constitutive of reality itself.
as “the gap that separates you from God cuts across God himself”
Žižek's signature Hegelian inversion of the experience of abandonment by God: the subjective gap is not an external obstacle but is immanent to God's own self-division.
Žižek's distillation of the 'hidden truth of Christianity' (via Paul Claudel): God requires humanity and is not the self-sufficient transcendent agency pulling strings from above.
The ideology that the subject can fully coincide with itself in an unbarred climactic moment, exemplified by the Romantic notion of full melodic subjectivity and the triangles-meeting model of sex.
as “barred subject”
The Lacanian subject as constitutively split, appearing here through the analogy of the thwarted melodic climax: true subjectivity requires the gap between two failed moments.
Žižek's musical figure for the barred subject: authentic art blocks the expected full melodic explosion so that it returns as a surplus remainder at the end, unlike Romantic kitsch which delivers the climax directly.
Lacan's formula that there is no sexual relationship; Žižek uses it to ground the claim that sexuality requires a phantasmatic supplement because the act is structurally incomplete.
The fantasy-construction that fills the gap left by the impossibility of the sexual relationship; Žižek argues we never outgrow this structure, it is constitutive, not merely childish.
Invoked implicitly through the discussion of society and ideology: appearances that are not appearances of anything behind them, objective appearances we don't recognise as such, as in Marxist fetishism.
Žižek's ontological definition of subjectivity: pure phenomenal appearance that is not the appearance of any deeper substance, a void, not a thing.
as “death drive / negativity”
Žižek equates the de-substantialised subject with nothingness, naming death drive and negativity as what fills that void, contrasted with Jung's redeeming depth-psychology.
Žižek endorses Stephen Jay Gould's view that consciousness is a spandrel, not selected for, as the most honest cognitivist admission, and uses it to maintain the irreducibility of subjectivity.
Žižek's ontological formula: actual things, sexual pleasures, society, quantum oscillations, exist as reactions to their own fundamental impossibility, not despite it.
as “substance is subject”
Žižek reads Hegel's dictum not as spiritualising substance but as saying that substance is itself thwarted, blocked, structured around its own impossibility, subject here names failure and void, not agency.
as “empty signifier (mana)”
Lévi-Strauss's concept of an element that stands in for the system's own impossibility; Žižek aligns it with suture to argue that every symbolic system requires such a 'stand-in for the void'.
The element that embodies the very impossibility of a symbolic system, enabling it to function; Žižek insists suture is not a secondary bad totalisation (as Deleuzians read it) but constitutive from the beginning.
The Greek term's double meaning (static state / standing up in resistance) becomes for Žižek the model of the ultimate act: resistance as remaining still while reality moves, not as active intervention.
as “God becomes for a brief moment atheist”
Chesterton's formulation (adopted by Žižek) for the cry of dereliction: if Christ genuinely suffered, God himself momentarily lost faith in himself, enacting the gap within the divine.
Stories he reaches for 2
Mladen Dolar told Žižek that Freud visited the terrifying Škocjan Cave (which inspired Dante's Inferno) and had a near-mystical encounter: deep inside, a dark figure approached, who turned out to be Karl Lueger, the antisemitic mayor of Vienna. Lüge means lie.
“you go deep, deep you don't encounter the ultimate, you encounter a cheap anti-Semite”
Michel Chion's reading of the Blue Velvet scene: Dennis Hopper's oxygen mask, heavy breathing, and obscenities are the visualisation of a child imagining what parents do during sex based on audio clues. Žižek adds that Hopper is an impotent father performing brutality to cover up impotence for the watching child.
“you should read this scene as the visualization of what a small kid… imagine a small kid listening at the door parents making love”
Works invoked 17
Mentioned by the host as having made a disruptive intervention bringing psychoanalysis into politics; Žižek references his work on substance and subject in it.
Homo Deus book
By Yuval Harari; called 'oversimplistic' and hated, but credited for one good point about post-humanists who argue against free will while still presupposing it.
Blue Velvet film
Called 'the most beautiful reading' in Lynch's work; the Dennis Hopper scene is used as the paradigm case for childhood fantasy and the structure of sexuality.
The Castle book
Kafka; the scene of K. approaching and finding only dirty small buildings used to illustrate that proximity to God/the Absolute destroys its transcendent aura.
Disparities book
Žižek's forthcoming book at the time; he says the second chapter goes against object-oriented ontology and he will send the text to the audience.
By Gillian Rose; cited as part of the tradition of naively materialist theology.
The Future of Hegel book
By Catherine Malabou; called 'excellent' and one of the three best Hegel books, even though Malabou later got distracted by brain science.
Lost Highway film
Žižek says he doesn't like the film but analyses the mafia boss's road-rage scene as an example of the impotent Lynchian father-figure.
By Beatrice Longuenesse; cited as one of the three best books on Hegel in recent decades.
Leonore No. 3 Overture other
Beethoven; Žižek calls the full-force reprise of the main theme at the end 'obscene', the kitsch of unbarred climax, used as foil to Mozart's blocked climax.
You Only Live Twice film
The James Bond marriage scene is analysed as an example of orientalist ideology encoded through music: restrained East vs. full-subjectivity West.
Ernst Bloch's early 1920s work; cited as an early positive reading of Avicenna's nominalist gap as the origin of a materialist left tradition.
Canon in D other
Pachelbel's Canon; analysed as a perpetual accompaniment that never gives way to a 'proper' melody, a case of authentic structural withholding.
Documentary by the host including an interview with Netanyahu; mentioned only in banter.
Mozart; contrasted with Beethoven's Leonore Overture as an example of blocked/displaced climax, the tutti is withheld and reappears as unexpected surplus at the end.
Mozart's serenade; the third movement is used to show the accompaniment-then-melody structure, which Žižek finds 'deeply suspicious' as already moving toward kitsch.
Rain and Tears song
By Aphrodite's Child; the Pachelbel-like intro topped with a pop melody is Žižek's paradigm case of kitsch, the supplement that should remain barred is delivered.
People invoked 39
Gillian Rose positive
Named as one of the three best Hegel scholars of recent decades (Hegel contra Sociology); Žižek credits her with inaugurating 'naively materialist theology' and expresses genuine admiration.
Mentioned in passing: his idea of hell reportedly came from visiting Škocjan Cave in his youth.
Alenka Zupančič positive
From Žižek's own country (Slovenia); listed among top women theorists.
Michel Chion positive
Called 'mega theorist of cinema, especially of sound and voice'; his reading of Blue Velvet's Dennis Hopper scene is praised and adopted.
Claude Lévi-Strauss positive
Cited for the empty signifier 'mana', an element that embodies the impossibility of the symbolic system, aligned with suture.
Rebecca Comay positive
Listed among the top women theorists and best Hegel scholars of recent decades.
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Adorno's notion of society cited as an example of the Hegelian transposition of antinomy into ontological feature of reality itself.
Jacques Lacan positive
Repeatedly invoked: 'Il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel', the subject of the unconscious as the Cartesian cogito, the shifter, suture. Žižek defends philosophical Lacanianism against clinical reductionists.
Stephen Jay Gould positive
Endorsed for the view that consciousness is an 'accidental byproduct', Žižek uses this as the most honest cognitivist admission, consistent with his de-substantialisation of the subject.
G. K. Chesterton positive
Quoted for the formulation that Christ's genuine suffering means 'God himself becomes for a brief moment atheist', Žižek uses this as the key to his theology.
Gilles Deleuze negative
The 'Deleuzian way' of reading quantum physics (happy field of multitudes, collapse as the bad guy) and suture (secondary totalisation of prior multiplicity) are both criticised.
David Lynch positive
Blue Velvet and Lost Highway analysed at length for the structure of impotent paternal figures and childhood fantasy; Žižek notes he doesn't like Lost Highway as a film but finds it philosophically illuminating.
Steven Pinker negative
Called a 'great idiot'; Žižek attacks his evolutionary psychology answer (we can't understand ourselves for the same reason rabbits can't do calculus) and says Pinker also attacks Žižek in his blog.
Yuval Noah Harari positive
Homo Deus called 'oversimplistic' and hated, but Žižek credits one good point: post-humanists argue against free will while still writing and arguing as if they were fully human subjects.
Paul Claudel positive
Conservative Catholic cited approvingly: 'The ultimate message of Christianity is God is impotent without us.' Žižek says he 'as usual admire[s] more and more' conservative Catholics for this insight.
Raymond Kurzweil negative
Called 'really an idiot'; his 'happy singularity' vision, all minds merging, is dismissed as the worst post-human fantasy.
Alain Badiou positive
Called 'otherwise good friend' but Žižek disagrees with his starting point of 'the real as multitude of multitudes', arguing instead that multiplicity arises from a prior gap/impossibility.
Graham Harman negative
Representative of object-oriented ontology, which Žižek dismisses as failing to overcome the transcendental dimension and naively re-substantialising the subject.
Averroes positive
The Muslim Aristotle-interpreter whose nominalist twist (gap between reality and concept) a reactionary Catholic blames for both postmodernism and fundamentalism; Žižek treats Avicenna as a positive figure via Bloch.
Carl Jung negative
Strongly rejected: everybody should be against Jung, who reinscribes the unconscious back into a pre-modern universe of archetypes and redeeming depth, the opposite of Freud's ABC.
Mladen Dolar positive
Called 'my friend' and credited with discovering the Freud-Škocjan cave anecdote.
Catherine Malabou positive
Praised as top theorist; The Future of Hegel called excellent, though Žižek notes she got distracted by brain science.
Mentioned in banter with the host (who had interviewed him); Žižek jokes he is 'starting to like the guy' but the tone is ironic.
Béatrice Longuenesse positive
Named as author of one of the three best books on Hegel in recent decades (Hegel and the Critique of Metaphysics).
Ernst Bloch positive
Praised for Avicenna und die aristotelische Linke (early 1920s), which Žižek sees as taking the nominalist gap in Avicenna positively, as the origin of a leftist materialism rather than relativism.
Walter Benjamin positive
Benjamin's Theses on History and his concept of Stillstand (dialectic at a standstill) cited as support for the idea that the ultimate act of resistance is static excess.
Jean Laplanche positive
Cited for the claim that Freud's Eros-Thanatos duality is a misstep, Žižek says he does not 'always follow him' but agrees on this point.
Quentin Meillassoux negative
Associated with speculative realism; Žižek notes he has 'erased himself out of the picture' and groups him with those who don't truly overcome the transcendental.
Søren Kierkegaard positive
Cited alongside Paul for the insight that Christ's existence is his ultimate message, not what he said.
Jesuit who wrote on dialectical materialism and theology, finding common realist ground between Stalinism and neo-Thomism, mentioned as a curious historical episode.
The antisemitic Mayor of Vienna whom Freud encountered in the Škocjan cave anecdote, embodying the 'cheap anti-Semite' as what you find when you go 'deep' into the unconscious.
Noam Chomsky negative
Žižek says he doesn't 'totally buy his linguistics' while acknowledging it as a great idea, contrasted with Hjelmslev and Jakobson.
Paul the Apostle positive
Praised for his 'wonderful ultimate almost perversity': indifference to Christ's deeds and words, focus only on death and resurrection, which Žižek reads as Paul seeing the truth of Christianity.
Sigmund Freud positive
Foundational for the sexuality discussion; Žižek defends Freud's ABC (unconscious yields lies not truths) but criticises the Eros-Thanatos duality as a regression.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Central reference throughout: Žižek defends Hegel against neo-Kantians, reads 'substance is subject' as the ontologisation of void, and credits Hegel with the decisive shift from epistemological to ontological impossibility.
Immanuel Kant positive
Žižek respects Kant as the forerunner of ideology theory (transcendental illusion) but argues he is 'too modest and tender', Hegel must radicalize him by moving antinomies from mind to reality.
Mentioned as the exemplar of Aristotelian realist synthesis that conservative Catholics and neo-Thomists defend against both nominalism and modernity.
Mentioned briefly as one of the theologians who found the problem of Christ's suffering on the cross irresolvable.
John Paul II negative
Called 'the one whom I really hated, consider humanist, the Polish Pope'; attacked for his claim that Christianity is logos-rational while Islam is irrational, philosophically wrong and politically dangerous.
What it argues
epistemological obstacle transposed into ontological impossibilityde-substantialised subject as void/negativitysexuality and constitutive ignorance/fantasythe barred melodic climax as model of authentic subjectivityChristianity as God divided within himselfthe death of God and impotence of the big Otherclass struggle and the impossibility of neutral definition
Dialectical moves 11
“What appears as an epistemological problem (the antinomy, our inability to know the thing-in-itself) is its own solution — antinomies are how reality itself is structured.”
The basic Hegelian reversal: the deadlock of thought is transposed from the subject's limits into an ontological feature of reality.
“The gap that separates you from God, it's a gap which from within cuts across God himself.”
Our experience of abandonment by God is not external to God but is the inner division of God, the subjective obstacle becomes an ontological split in the Absolute.
“Far from being a modest limitation of our mind, Kant is too modest: the antinomies do not belong to us but to reality itself.”
Žižek reverses the standard neo-Kantian defence of Kant's modesty: Hegel is not a reckless metaphysician but the more consistent thinker who goes all the way.
“Devil is just a close-up on God. If you get too close to God you see what…”
The divine and the demonic are not opposites, the terrifying face of evil is what you see when the comforting distance of transcendence collapses.
“God himself becomes for a brief moment atheist — God commits the ultimate sin of not believing in himself.”
The crucifixion enacts the self-negation of God; the cry of dereliction is not a PR stunt but God's own atheism, which is the truth of monotheism.
“The true art needs is the first part — in authentic art melody always fails; it returns as an excess too late.”
Authentic artistic subjectivity is not the full Romantic climax but the barred, thwarted explosion that returns displaced, lack is the condition of the subject, not its absence.
“Substance is subject means not that substance is personified but that substance is in itself thwarted, blocked, structured around its own impossibility.”
Žižek inverts the usual reading of Hegel's formula: 'subject' does not add a spirit to substance but reveals substance as void-centred.
“Things exist because they are impossible. Actual things exist as a reaction to their own impossibility.”
Existence is not the overcoming of impossibility but its product, the impossible is not what prevents the real but what generates it.
“The ultimate act of resistance is not saying no, but saying yes in an excessive way — standing still while everything is moving.”
Žižek inverts the activist picture of resistance: the most radical act is stasis (in both senses), an excessive affirmation rather than a refusal.
“Subject is an appearance which is not an appearance of anything behind it.”
The subject is neither a substantial ego nor mere illusion, it is pure surface appearance with no depth, making appearance itself ontologically primary.
“The ignorance, the intrigue that I don't know what's going on — this element of ignorance is not just stupid child's ignorance… it's constitutive of the thing itself.”
Sexual ignorance is not a contingent obstacle to sexuality but its very structure: the epistemological gap is transposed into an ontological feature of sexuality.
Claims 20
asserts
What Kant confines to epistemological limits (antinomies of reason) Hegel transposes into constitutive features of reality itself — the antinomy is how reality in itself is structured.Hegel's advance over Kant; the Kant-Hegel shift
rejects
New ontologies (Graham Harman's object-oriented ontology, Meillassoux) do not truly overcome the transcendental dimension but merely return naively to positive ontology.speculative realism / new ontologies
asserts
The gap separating us from God is not an external obstacle but cuts across God himself — Christianity's deepest move is this Hegelian self-division of the divine.Christianity and the death of God
asserts
God is impotent without us; the ultimate message of Christianity is not that God pulls the strings but that God needs humanity.Christian theology; divine omnipotence
asserts
What dies on the cross is not a terrestrial representative of God but God himself as a transcendent beyond — crucifixion liberates us precisely by eliminating the big Other.the crucifixion and the death of God
asserts
Ignorance and fantasy are not contingent obstacles to sexuality but are constitutive of it — without the structure of 'not knowing', there is no sexuality.Freudian sexuality and the role of fantasy
asserts
We never 'grow up' sexually — the structure of childhood sexuality (filling gaps with fantasy) persists and is irreducible for the adult.sexuality, fantasy, and the impossibility of the sexual relationship
asserts
Authentic art thwarts the melodic climax; Romantic kitsch delivers it directly — the true subject is expressed only in the gap between the thwarted and the displaced climax.music, aesthetics, and the theory of the barred subject
asserts
The subject has no substance — it is pure appearance with nothing behind it, a void whose name is death drive and negativity.the Lacanian/Hegelian subject; de-substantialisation
rejects
Object-oriented ontology's move to re-substantialise the subject as an object among objects misreads Hegel, who uses 'substance is subject' to say substance is itself thwarted and void-centred.object-oriented ontology; Harman; re-substantialisation of the subject
rejects
The Freudian duality of Eros and Thanatos is a regression into a worst sexualised cosmic dualism and should be rejected even within Freudianism.Freud's Eros-Thanatos duality
asserts
There is no neutral definition of left and right — every attempt to define the distinction already takes a left or right position, making political antagonism structurally parallel to the impossibility of the sexual relationship.class struggle, political antagonism, and the Real
asserts
Things exist as reactions to their own impossibility: sexual pleasures exist because the sexual relationship is impossible; society exists because class struggle makes it impossible.ontology of impossibility; sexuality; society
rejects
Steven Pinker's answer that humans cannot understand themselves for the same reason rabbits can't do calculus fails because unlike rabbits we are obsessed by the unsolvable problems — that obsession demands explanation.Steven Pinker; evolutionary psychology; limits of self-knowledge
rejects
Jung's depth psychology is wrong because the unconscious is not a deeper redeeming truth but the site of fundamental fantasies — fundamental lies.Jungian depth psychology
asserts
Paul is not interested in what Christ said or did but only in his death and resurrection — that indifference is the theological truth of Christianity, not a deficiency.Pauline theology; Christ's message
asserts
The deepest manners and superficial social forms can override deep racist prejudice more effectively than appeals to inner goodness — ethics operates at the surface, not the depth.ethics; manners vs. inner virtue; racism
asserts
If we lose the structure of sexual ignorance/impossibility through artificial reproduction and post-human transformation, we will lose not just sexuality but many of our intellectual functions.post-humanism; artificial reproduction; sexuality and cognition
rejects
Suture is not a secondary bad totalisation of a happy prior multiplicity (as Deleuzians claim) but is constitutive of any symbolic system from the start.Deleuzian reading of suture
asserts
The Cartesian cogito is the subject of the unconscious — this is counter-intuitive but correct: Lacan's unconscious subject is not the opposite of Cartesian rationalism but its radicalization.Lacan, Descartes, and the subject of the unconscious
Quotes 21
“When I truly—like I'm glad to say there are more top women. It's you, it's Catherine Malabou, it's Rebecca Comay, from my own country, Alenka Zupančič. Isn't it wonderful that the three best books on Hegel written in the last decades were all written by women?”Slavoj Žižek · praise for women Hegel scholars
“When I truly admire someone I say: fucker bitch, let her have a heart attack, why didn't I write that? That's the only recognition you get from me.”Slavoj Žižek · Žižek's theory of envy as genuine admiration
“The antinomies is the real, is how reality in itself is structured. So this is the basic turn of Hegel.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegelian transposition of epistemological antinomy into ontological reality
“What appears as a problem is its own solution — antinomies is the real, is how reality in itself is structured.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegelian dialectical resolution
“The gap that separates you from God, it's a gap which from within cuts across God himself.”Slavoj Žižek · God's self-division; Hegelian theology
“The ultimate message of Christianity is God is impotent without us. God is powerless without us.”Slavoj Žižek · divine impotence; hidden truth of Christianity
“Devil is just a close-up on God. If you get too close to God you see what…”Slavoj Žižek · proximity destroys transcendence; God and devil as the same
“God himself becomes for a brief moment atheist. God commits the ultimate sin of not believing in himself.”Slavoj Žižek · the cry of dereliction as divine atheism
“The worst thing that can happen is if these triangles come together. That's the romantic lie.”Slavoj Žižek · critique of romantic ideology of complete sexual union
“In true art melody has to fail, but it returns as an excess too late.”Slavoj Žižek · aesthetics of the barred subject; authentic art vs. kitsch
“Subject means you have to have two climaxes. In this gap subject functions.”Slavoj Žižek · the barred subject; subjectivity as gap
“Without this ignorance, this intrigue that I don't know what's going on so I need to fantasize… you don't have sexuality.”Slavoj Žižek · constitutive ignorance and fantasy in sexuality
“It's not simply a subjective error but a necessary, as Kant calls it, transcendental illusion — this is where Kant becomes almost one of the forerunners of the theory of ideology.”Slavoj Žižek · Kant as precursor of ideology critique
“If you look deep into yourself you will always discover that you are a piece of shit. Ethical miracles happen precisely when the superficial surface of your being takes over.”Slavoj Žižek · ethics of the surface; against depth psychology
“You go deep, deep, you don't encounter the ultimate, you encounter a cheap anti-Semite.”Slavoj Žižek · refutation of depth psychology via Freud's Škocjan cave anecdote
“Think there are things because they are impossible. Actual things exist as a reaction to their own impossibility.”Slavoj Žižek · ontology of impossibility; things exist through their own impossibility
“Subject is an appearance which is not an appearance of anything behind it.”Slavoj Žižek · de-substantialised subject; pure phenomenal appearance
“Nothingness, nothingness. Absolutely, but this nothingness has a name: death drive, negativity.”Slavoj Žižek · the subject as void; death drive as name for negativity
“Every approach to class struggle is already from a position of class struggle.”Slavoj Žižek · class antagonism as constitutive of any attempt to define it
“The true miracle of language is not that we are always part of reality, but how can we even imagine that we are not?”Slavoj Žižek · language, negativity, and the distance from reality
“What Paul saw so clearly — the uniqueness of Christ is that his existence itself is his ultimate message. It's not what he says.”Slavoj Žižek · Pauline theology; Christ's existence as message
Transcript 90 turns
unknown
All right, welcome, delighted to see you all. This is the third, as most of you I expect will know, of a series of classes by Slavoj Žižek, who we're always thrilled to welcome at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, where I am now delighted to say I have become part of that institute and therefore I count him as my colleague.
All right, welcome, delighted to see you all. This is the third, as most of you I expect will know, of a series of classes by Slavoj Žižek, who we're always thrilled to welcome at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, where I am now delighted to say I have become part of that institute and therefore I count him as my colleague.
Slavoj Žižek
You are the boss now, no?
You are the boss now, no?
unknown
Esther Leslie and I are co-directing, a feminist gesture, right? Two women, we co-direct. Okay. So Slavoj of course has spoken here many times and he always attracts an extraordinary audience of dedicated listeners. I was going to say followers but I don't like that word, so I'll say listeners. I want to say something that some of you will have heard me say before, which is that I personally owe Slavoj a huge debt because when The Sublime Object of Ideology came out in, I always get it wrong, I think it’s '89. '89, thank you. In it felt to me as if it just made a disruption and an intervention into the parlance of public intellectual discourse, which is to say that it brought psychoanalysis into the realm of politics, probably for the first time more or less, I would say, since Marcuse and the Frankfurt School in a new and continuously illuminating way. So I am personally hugely appreciative of that. Since then, of course—don’t worry, I’m not going to list his books—he has written prolifically about subjects which border, always border, on politics, psychoanalysis, philosophy, ethics, and much more. He is the original interdisciplinary critical thinker. He is talking this week about the relationship between philosophy and psychoanalysis. And just one small piece of housekeeping is that both he and I have to leave at ten to two today, so I will stop— Ten to four. Ten to four. You said ten to two, she did, no? I did. I did.
Esther Leslie and I are co-directing, a feminist gesture, right? Two women, we co-direct. Okay. So Slavoj of course has spoken here many times and he always attracts an extraordinary audience of dedicated listeners. I was going to say followers but I don't like that word, so I'll say listeners. I want to say something that some of you will have heard me say before, which is that I personally owe Slavoj a huge debt because when The Sublime Object of Ideology came out in, I always get it wrong, I think it’s '89. '89, thank you. In it felt to me as if it just made a disruption and an intervention into the parlance of public intellectual discourse, which is to say that it brought psychoanalysis into the realm of politics, probably for the first time more or less, I would say, since Marcuse and the Frankfurt School in a new and continuously illuminating way. So I am personally hugely appreciative of that. Since then, of course—don’t worry, I’m not going to list his books—he has written prolifically about subjects which border, always border, on politics, psychoanalysis, philosophy, ethics, and much more. He is the original interdisciplinary critical thinker. He is talking this week about the relationship between philosophy and psychoanalysis. And just one small piece of housekeeping is that both he and I have to leave at ten to two today, so I will stop— Ten to four. Ten to four. You said ten to two, she did, no? I did. I did.
Slavoj Žižek
But you made a correct slip, that would be my desire, so… Hello, I must be going
But you made a correct slip, that would be my desire, so… Hello, I must be going
unknown
and… Okay, sorry about that. Ten to four, so I will stop the session at quarter to so that we really get away at ten to. And I will now hand over to Slavoj, who I know is going to start by responding to a question about transcendence which he has been handed from the floor. So welcome to you all, welcome Slavoj, and over to you.
and… Okay, sorry about that. Ten to four, so I will stop the session at quarter to so that we really get away at ten to. And I will now hand over to Slavoj, who I know is going to start by responding to a question about transcendence which he has been handed from the floor. So welcome to you all, welcome Slavoj, and over to you.
Slavoj Žižek
Thanks very much and for me it's always disgusting to in this patronizing pseudo-feminist way to say how wonderful a woman like you, great theory. I always suspect that when you address someone like that, you know, it's this the worst male chauvinism. The idea is, you see, she is a woman but in spite of that she is not totally stupid. You know, there are always these games. So I will celebrate you in the only way I can. I will say while I'm reading you, I quite often really, really hate you. It's envy. Because you are often so good that you know, I said, fucker bitch, let her have a heart attack, why didn't I write that? And so on, no? That's the only recognition you get from… Because you know, when you praise someone, implicitly you are above, you know, like you posit yourself on… No! When I truly—like there are and there are unfortunately for my male chauvinism but for the interest of eternal theory fortunately—if you put on the balance at least in our field, the top masculine and feminine theorists, at least in my narrower field, people who are somehow close to me, I'm glad to say there are more top women. It’s you, it’s—I don't agree with her, but she has potentials—Catherine Malabou, it’s Rebecca Comay, from my own country, Alenka Zupančič, and so on. And I just find this wonderful. For example, as I already said here, isn't it wonderful that the three best books on Hegel written in the last decades were all written by women? It's Beatrice Longuenesse, Hegel and the Critique of Metaphysics years ago. Then it was of course now Rebecca Comay, Catherine Malabou, later he got distracted through all this brain science stuff, whatever, but her The Future of Hegel is still an excellent book. So isn't this wonderful news? It's not that as some— And
Thanks very much and for me it's always disgusting to in this patronizing pseudo-feminist way to say how wonderful a woman like you, great theory. I always suspect that when you address someone like that, you know, it's this the worst male chauvinism. The idea is, you see, she is a woman but in spite of that she is not totally stupid. You know, there are always these games. So I will celebrate you in the only way I can. I will say while I'm reading you, I quite often really, really hate you. It's envy. Because you are often so good that you know, I said, fucker bitch, let her have a heart attack, why didn't I write that? And so on, no? That's the only recognition you get from… Because you know, when you praise someone, implicitly you are above, you know, like you posit yourself on… No! When I truly—like there are and there are unfortunately for my male chauvinism but for the interest of eternal theory fortunately—if you put on the balance at least in our field, the top masculine and feminine theorists, at least in my narrower field, people who are somehow close to me, I'm glad to say there are more top women. It’s you, it’s—I don't agree with her, but she has potentials—Catherine Malabou, it’s Rebecca Comay, from my own country, Alenka Zupančič, and so on. And I just find this wonderful. For example, as I already said here, isn't it wonderful that the three best books on Hegel written in the last decades were all written by women? It's Beatrice Longuenesse, Hegel and the Critique of Metaphysics years ago. Then it was of course now Rebecca Comay, Catherine Malabou, later he got distracted through all this brain science stuff, whatever, but her The Future of Hegel is still an excellent book. So isn't this wonderful news? It's not that as some— And
unknown
Gillian Rose. Thank you. I've just written them a note.
Gillian Rose. Thank you. I've just written them a note.
Slavoj Žižek
I know, I quote her. I only thought now this is—I am saying this sincerely as an apology, but as I already told you once, I heard rumors that behind all this sisterly love…
I know, I quote her. I only thought now this is—I am saying this sincerely as an apology, but as I already told you once, I heard rumors that behind all this sisterly love…
unknown
Oh, don't start this again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't start this again, Slavoj.
Oh, don't start this again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't start this again, Slavoj.
Slavoj Žižek
I was afraid to mention it. Yeah, you should be, because you're wrong. You're wrong,
I was afraid to mention it. Yeah, you should be, because you're wrong. You're wrong,
unknown
that's why. You should be afraid to mention
that's why. You should be afraid to mention
Slavoj Žižek
it. Okay, okay. Yeah, of course, her Hegel contra Sociology or whatever, no? It's simple. And what I especially like with Gillian is the… she began what I like to count, include myself into, let's call it naively materialist theology. This link to theology, which is paradoxically not theological. Yes. Okay. So now, before I begin, before I end—sorry, last my envy-admiration to you. I don't know how you will read it, but I heard that once you had a talk or an debate with Netanyahu, an interview or what, no? And that—pardon me if I put it in my vulgar male chauvinist terms—you squeezed his balls. Although you admitted to me that unfortunately, bad news for us, he is a very intelligent guy in this superficial sense and so on, no? I did interview
it. Okay, okay. Yeah, of course, her Hegel contra Sociology or whatever, no? It's simple. And what I especially like with Gillian is the… she began what I like to count, include myself into, let's call it naively materialist theology. This link to theology, which is paradoxically not theological. Yes. Okay. So now, before I begin, before I end—sorry, last my envy-admiration to you. I don't know how you will read it, but I heard that once you had a talk or an debate with Netanyahu, an interview or what, no? And that—pardon me if I put it in my vulgar male chauvinist terms—you squeezed his balls. Although you admitted to me that unfortunately, bad news for us, he is a very intelligent guy in this superficial sense and so on, no? I did interview
unknown
Netanyahu.
Netanyahu.
Slavoj Žižek
And you told me this that he is… I don't
And you told me this that he is… I don't
unknown
think I put it quite like you did.
think I put it quite like you did.
Slavoj Žižek
No, I just put it in plastic terms so that ordinary people can understand. You revealed
No, I just put it in plastic terms so that ordinary people can understand. You revealed
unknown
himself. We'll get off this now. And if you are interested, it's a film called Dangerously Liaison: Israel and America. It was made for Channel television in which does indeed include an interview with the hyper-polished Netanyahu, who by the way was not PM of Israel at the time but had Office of the Prime Minister on his door. I hand over to you.
himself. We'll get off this now. And if you are interested, it's a film called Dangerously Liaison: Israel and America. It was made for Channel television in which does indeed include an interview with the hyper-polished Netanyahu, who by the way was not PM of Israel at the time but had Office of the Prime Minister on his door. I hand over to you.
Slavoj Žižek
Oh my God, I kind of… I’m starting to like the guy. Okay, let me just answer a question which came to me now, one of you writing to me: “I came yesterday because you were going to talk about transcendence, which you don't often do, but I didn't hear you mention that word even once. I say nothing about the boring German.” Sorry, here I simply am too stupid to guess who is the boring German—Hegel or who? I simply don't get it. But let
Oh my God, I kind of… I’m starting to like the guy. Okay, let me just answer a question which came to me now, one of you writing to me: “I came yesterday because you were going to talk about transcendence, which you don't often do, but I didn't hear you mention that word even once. I say nothing about the boring German.” Sorry, here I simply am too stupid to guess who is the boring German—Hegel or who? I simply don't get it. But let
unknown
me—where are you?
me—where are you?
Slavoj Žižek
No, no, I'm not putting pressure, I mean, you have the full right to remain anonymous and so on. All I'm saying is that look at the title of my talk, if I got it correctly. I promised to speak about not transcendence, but the transcendental dimension. I think the official title was “Can we overcome, get over the transcendental dimension?” Okay, now I'm not, don't want to be too patronizing, but you must know that in the Kantian tradition, transcendental and transcendent or transcender are exactly the opposite. For Kant, we are limited to our experience, and our approach to reality is structured through these a priori transcendental categories of reason. Kant is looking for transcendentals in the sense of: when we approach reality, through which frame—it’s not even a frame, it’s like natural frame—through what frame do we perceive necessarily, it’s an a priori reality? You know, then you have all the categories like identity, cause, effects, time, space, whatever. But Kant's point is precisely that the reality we get structured in this way, it's a phenomenal reality. It's not the transcendent reality, if by transcendence we imagine reality the way it is in itself independently outside or however from our subjectivity. So, but second point, and here even if I didn't use the word transcendence, I think in a confused way, so to repay my debt to you as I promised this evening I will send to you all the stuff and so on, I think I did answer precisely that question yesterday. Because in a confused way, what I was improvising about is this shift from Kant to Hegel, which is, as I emphasized, the shift from epistemological obstacle to ontological impossibility. Kant, for Kant the transcendence is… is unreachable. We cannot get at how the things are in themselves. So for Kant, that was my point, you remember yesterday, our antinomies, the antinomies we get caught into necessarily when we try to think reality in its wholeness, in its entirety, beyond our finitude, we get caught into antinomies, which are for Kant even stronger than simple antagonisms or contradictions or whatever. And they are necessary. They are as it were, they are necessary—this is where Kant becomes almost one of the forerunners of the theory of ideology, which is not simply a subjective error but a necessary, as Kant calls it, transcendental illusion. And then what I tried to do, you remember all those examples that I was repeating again and again from my previous books—Adorno's notion of society and so on—my point was exactly how Hegel, what I promised in my title, steps beyond the transcendental, the antinomy. Not in this naive sense of saying, but we have somehow, somehow penetrated through antinomies to how reality in itself is, but precisely the basic dialectical reversal to claim that what appears as a problem is its own solution, that antinomies is the real, is how reality in itself is structured. So this is the basic turn of Hegel. Hegel… Hegel is… you know, people usually defend Kant against Hegel, neo-Kantians in this sense: Kant is much more modest, he limits our mind to our finitude and so on, while, sorry, Kant, while Hegel regresses to pre-critical metaphysics. He provides the whole scheme of reality and so on and so on. No, I think that it's the opposite. Kant is too modest and tender. Kant, Kant limits antinomies to epistemology, to our mind, to how we perceive reality. While Hegel goes in this madness to the end and claims no, Kantian antinomies are constitutive of, if you want to put it in this way, on reality in itself. Which means also that we have to de-substantialise reality, and that I will come later today to that. That was my point, that if you want it's popular to use these terms today although I am, I hope also, I'm deeply distrustful of this explosion of new ontologies today. They raise very interesting questions, but I don't think they really overcome the transcendental dimension. You know, from Graham Harman to—well I don't even know what is happening now with Quentin Meillassoux, he somehow, as they say, erased himself out of the picture—this idea, enough of, enough of deconstruction transcendental approach where you just get caught into this discursive immanent analysis and let's return to positive ontology. I try to find a third way here, claiming yes, they are onto something, but not in this naive sense of return to ontology. It's all we can do is to transpose the deadlock of antinomies into reality itself. And then I, my tribute to Gillian, then I tried to found—you remember towards the end yesterday—tried to find an echo of Christianity into it. That's for me the basic operation of Christianity. I will repeat it. Our basic experience is we are separated from God. God is beyond. How does Christianity overcome this? Not by saying okay, but if you torture yourself enough or do good works, you somehow reach God. No, at that point when you feel yourself abandoned by God, you are in a position of Jesus Christ, of God. So that the gap that separates you from God, it's a gap which from within cuts across God himself. That's a typical Hegelian operation. And Hegel, it's wonderful, he does one slip of tongue where he betrays this. You know, when Hegel talks somewhere about the difference between Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Christianity—I will not go into this, is he orientalist here or whatever—just the slip of tongue that he makes. He knows very well because he writes at other places about this that, you know what was theologically the reason for the split? One of the reasons. The provenance of the Holy Ghost, no? For Western Christianity, it's from Father and Son. Oh, both together. God Father and Jesus, from both of them arises, emanates Holy Spirit. For Orthodoxy, Father must remain an unconditional boss-king, it’s only from the Father. Now Hegel knows this, again because he writes elsewhere abandoned, but in the crucial formulation, he commits a stupid but beautiful mistake. He says the difference is that for Russian Orthodoxy, Holy Spirit emanates, comes, originates from Father and Son, and from Western Christianity only from the Son. I think he was right in a way. Because my reading of Hegel, of Christianity is Hegel's where as Hegel put it—again what happens on the cross? It's not just that a representative of God dies and you know, God screwed it up so my son come back to me and maybe in thousand years I will try again to send the Messiah. Christ is not a Messiah. What as Hegel puts it, it's extraordinary, what dies on the cross is not here a terrestrial representative of God, but is a God of beyond itself. The death of, crucifixion means precisely we are free. There is no that up there or whatever agency pulling secretly the strings and so on and so on. The message is the one even—I quote him somewhere—made clear even by some conservative Catholics whom I as usual admire more and more like Paul Claudel. He said that the ultimate message of Christianity is not you can rely on God, like things may appear confused but you can trust somebody pulls the strings. But he said on the contrary, the ultimate message of Christianity is God is impotent without us. God is powerless without us. And I think this accounts for this passivity of Christ. Christ, you know, it's so interesting to talk with Christian priests. I'm sorry if I repeat myself a little bit. I had many debates with them. Ah, please yes. There are seats all—there are lots—could you all move up to the end of your row? There are seats all across the room. And there are lots of people sitting on the floor. But I only suspect that people prefer to stay there because then they are bored, it's easier to get out. Which is my, my idea is, do you want to do this mechanism and we share the profit? You stay there, anyone who goes out just for the toilet have to leave twenty pounds with you. He gets them back only if he, you know… It's true people's democracy is kind of… Okay, let's stop it. Let me go on. I want to ask you a question. You? I want to ask you a question immediately because you just… Do it now, okay. You said that what I think you said that what Hegel does is transposes the deadlock of the antinomies into reality itself. He says this. Yes, and what you say is the gap that separates you from God cuts within God himself. Yeah. I think these are psychoanalytic comments. You think. I want to suggest to you that they're psychoanalytic comments or rather I want you to suggest how what you're saying might link to psychoanalysis. Because it seems to me they're resonant with a certain notion of Lacan's analytic process. Yeah. Yeah, first I will say okay, maybe. But I have many quotes I cannot go into how of course my one piece of evidence, no, is that Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, Father why have you forsaken me? And I had wonderful debates, I'm not floating around, I will answer you, with priests where I asked them a simple stupid question: when Christ is dying on the cross and bemoans oh Father, I suffer, is he bluffing or not? It's incredible how priests who were all the time studying the Bible, how many were confused. Once I was at a round table with many priests and they started to fight each other. And I understand them because whatever you answer you are in deep shit. If you say
No, no, I'm not putting pressure, I mean, you have the full right to remain anonymous and so on. All I'm saying is that look at the title of my talk, if I got it correctly. I promised to speak about not transcendence, but the transcendental dimension. I think the official title was “Can we overcome, get over the transcendental dimension?” Okay, now I'm not, don't want to be too patronizing, but you must know that in the Kantian tradition, transcendental and transcendent or transcender are exactly the opposite. For Kant, we are limited to our experience, and our approach to reality is structured through these a priori transcendental categories of reason. Kant is looking for transcendentals in the sense of: when we approach reality, through which frame—it’s not even a frame, it’s like natural frame—through what frame do we perceive necessarily, it’s an a priori reality? You know, then you have all the categories like identity, cause, effects, time, space, whatever. But Kant's point is precisely that the reality we get structured in this way, it's a phenomenal reality. It's not the transcendent reality, if by transcendence we imagine reality the way it is in itself independently outside or however from our subjectivity. So, but second point, and here even if I didn't use the word transcendence, I think in a confused way, so to repay my debt to you as I promised this evening I will send to you all the stuff and so on, I think I did answer precisely that question yesterday. Because in a confused way, what I was improvising about is this shift from Kant to Hegel, which is, as I emphasized, the shift from epistemological obstacle to ontological impossibility. Kant, for Kant the transcendence is… is unreachable. We cannot get at how the things are in themselves. So for Kant, that was my point, you remember yesterday, our antinomies, the antinomies we get caught into necessarily when we try to think reality in its wholeness, in its entirety, beyond our finitude, we get caught into antinomies, which are for Kant even stronger than simple antagonisms or contradictions or whatever. And they are necessary. They are as it were, they are necessary—this is where Kant becomes almost one of the forerunners of the theory of ideology, which is not simply a subjective error but a necessary, as Kant calls it, transcendental illusion. And then what I tried to do, you remember all those examples that I was repeating again and again from my previous books—Adorno's notion of society and so on—my point was exactly how Hegel, what I promised in my title, steps beyond the transcendental, the antinomy. Not in this naive sense of saying, but we have somehow, somehow penetrated through antinomies to how reality in itself is, but precisely the basic dialectical reversal to claim that what appears as a problem is its own solution, that antinomies is the real, is how reality in itself is structured. So this is the basic turn of Hegel. Hegel… Hegel is… you know, people usually defend Kant against Hegel, neo-Kantians in this sense: Kant is much more modest, he limits our mind to our finitude and so on, while, sorry, Kant, while Hegel regresses to pre-critical metaphysics. He provides the whole scheme of reality and so on and so on. No, I think that it's the opposite. Kant is too modest and tender. Kant, Kant limits antinomies to epistemology, to our mind, to how we perceive reality. While Hegel goes in this madness to the end and claims no, Kantian antinomies are constitutive of, if you want to put it in this way, on reality in itself. Which means also that we have to de-substantialise reality, and that I will come later today to that. That was my point, that if you want it's popular to use these terms today although I am, I hope also, I'm deeply distrustful of this explosion of new ontologies today. They raise very interesting questions, but I don't think they really overcome the transcendental dimension. You know, from Graham Harman to—well I don't even know what is happening now with Quentin Meillassoux, he somehow, as they say, erased himself out of the picture—this idea, enough of, enough of deconstruction transcendental approach where you just get caught into this discursive immanent analysis and let's return to positive ontology. I try to find a third way here, claiming yes, they are onto something, but not in this naive sense of return to ontology. It's all we can do is to transpose the deadlock of antinomies into reality itself. And then I, my tribute to Gillian, then I tried to found—you remember towards the end yesterday—tried to find an echo of Christianity into it. That's for me the basic operation of Christianity. I will repeat it. Our basic experience is we are separated from God. God is beyond. How does Christianity overcome this? Not by saying okay, but if you torture yourself enough or do good works, you somehow reach God. No, at that point when you feel yourself abandoned by God, you are in a position of Jesus Christ, of God. So that the gap that separates you from God, it's a gap which from within cuts across God himself. That's a typical Hegelian operation. And Hegel, it's wonderful, he does one slip of tongue where he betrays this. You know, when Hegel talks somewhere about the difference between Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Christianity—I will not go into this, is he orientalist here or whatever—just the slip of tongue that he makes. He knows very well because he writes at other places about this that, you know what was theologically the reason for the split? One of the reasons. The provenance of the Holy Ghost, no? For Western Christianity, it's from Father and Son. Oh, both together. God Father and Jesus, from both of them arises, emanates Holy Spirit. For Orthodoxy, Father must remain an unconditional boss-king, it’s only from the Father. Now Hegel knows this, again because he writes elsewhere abandoned, but in the crucial formulation, he commits a stupid but beautiful mistake. He says the difference is that for Russian Orthodoxy, Holy Spirit emanates, comes, originates from Father and Son, and from Western Christianity only from the Son. I think he was right in a way. Because my reading of Hegel, of Christianity is Hegel's where as Hegel put it—again what happens on the cross? It's not just that a representative of God dies and you know, God screwed it up so my son come back to me and maybe in thousand years I will try again to send the Messiah. Christ is not a Messiah. What as Hegel puts it, it's extraordinary, what dies on the cross is not here a terrestrial representative of God, but is a God of beyond itself. The death of, crucifixion means precisely we are free. There is no that up there or whatever agency pulling secretly the strings and so on and so on. The message is the one even—I quote him somewhere—made clear even by some conservative Catholics whom I as usual admire more and more like Paul Claudel. He said that the ultimate message of Christianity is not you can rely on God, like things may appear confused but you can trust somebody pulls the strings. But he said on the contrary, the ultimate message of Christianity is God is impotent without us. God is powerless without us. And I think this accounts for this passivity of Christ. Christ, you know, it's so interesting to talk with Christian priests. I'm sorry if I repeat myself a little bit. I had many debates with them. Ah, please yes. There are seats all—there are lots—could you all move up to the end of your row? There are seats all across the room. And there are lots of people sitting on the floor. But I only suspect that people prefer to stay there because then they are bored, it's easier to get out. Which is my, my idea is, do you want to do this mechanism and we share the profit? You stay there, anyone who goes out just for the toilet have to leave twenty pounds with you. He gets them back only if he, you know… It's true people's democracy is kind of… Okay, let's stop it. Let me go on. I want to ask you a question. You? I want to ask you a question immediately because you just… Do it now, okay. You said that what I think you said that what Hegel does is transposes the deadlock of the antinomies into reality itself. He says this. Yes, and what you say is the gap that separates you from God cuts within God himself. Yeah. I think these are psychoanalytic comments. You think. I want to suggest to you that they're psychoanalytic comments or rather I want you to suggest how what you're saying might link to psychoanalysis. Because it seems to me they're resonant with a certain notion of Lacan's analytic process. Yeah. Yeah, first I will say okay, maybe. But I have many quotes I cannot go into how of course my one piece of evidence, no, is that Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, Father why have you forsaken me? And I had wonderful debates, I'm not floating around, I will answer you, with priests where I asked them a simple stupid question: when Christ is dying on the cross and bemoans oh Father, I suffer, is he bluffing or not? It's incredible how priests who were all the time studying the Bible, how many were confused. Once I was at a round table with many priests and they started to fight each other. And I understand them because whatever you answer you are in deep shit. If you say
unknown
Christ is nonetheless God, he is, he was bluffing, then that's horror. Then this means that crucifixion
Christ is nonetheless God, he is, he was bluffing, then that's horror. Then this means that crucifixion
Slavoj Žižek
was just a spectacle for us to impress. It was a good PR operation, but in reality let's, let's perform as if I'm suffering but hi Dad, I join you in half an hour or whatever. Now if Christ really suffered, then as Chesterton put it, then you really have to suppose that it's a beautiful term by Chesterton that God himself becomes for a brief moment atheist. God commits the ultimate sin of not believing in himself and so on and so on and so on. And it's incredible, from Luther to other theologians, what problems they have with this. I'm sorry if
was just a spectacle for us to impress. It was a good PR operation, but in reality let's, let's perform as if I'm suffering but hi Dad, I join you in half an hour or whatever. Now if Christ really suffered, then as Chesterton put it, then you really have to suppose that it's a beautiful term by Chesterton that God himself becomes for a brief moment atheist. God commits the ultimate sin of not believing in himself and so on and so on and so on. And it's incredible, from Luther to other theologians, what problems they have with this. I'm sorry if
unknown
I repeat but it's my favorite story anecdote, a joke. When I was in Poland I had a debate with a Catholic priest. He was presented to me as a liberal but you know, I'm sorry, I love Poland, if there are some Poles here but my impression in Poland was that if somebody says he is a liberal it just means that he is not openly anti-Semitic or whatever no and that he maybe allows in some exceptional cases
I repeat but it's my favorite story anecdote, a joke. When I was in Poland I had a debate with a Catholic priest. He was presented to me as a liberal but you know, I'm sorry, I love Poland, if there are some Poles here but my impression in Poland was that if somebody says he is a liberal it just means that he is not openly anti-Semitic or whatever no and that he maybe allows in some exceptional cases
Slavoj Žižek
abortion and so on, you know. Okay, but this priest, we debated, then I asked him: okay, this question, what happens on the cross? And then I also asked him, you know, all those problematic points like: I don't bring peace, I bring war. So yeah, if you have a shirt and don't have a sword, sell your shirt, buy a sword. And oh, if you don't hate your father, mother you are not—how do you read this? My God, I loved his answer. You know what his answer: “I'm so sorry, you confused me, I'm not ready now, prepared to answer.” And I exploded, I told him: “Fuck you, you had two thousand years to prepare the answer.” You know, it's not that he learned now this all the time and they don't have an answer. And most of the—ah you know why I like Protestantism? Ah there I have debates with people who are, I'm more and more getting unfortunately Protestant. Because the implication of Protestantism, of predestination, is that basically God is ethically a primitive thug playing with us. Protestantism means I will just play a game, you are redeemed, you are not, no matter what you do. It's a certain insight not only into a cruelty of God but into this mindless brutal ignorance of God. That's why my preferred theological image is the opposite one, of that one, you know, things may appear confused to us but if you get close to God you see higher order. No, God is the same as a devil. Devil is just a close-up on God. If you get too close to God you see what… You know, it's like my favorite scene we all know it, Kafka, The Castle. From down there they think castle is majestic and so on, but you remember once Joseph, no it's not Joseph K., just K. the whatever tries to climb up and he almost arrives at the castle and he sees that these are just small dirty buildings, nothing special and so on and so on. But okay, let me stop with it and claim that I totally agree with you. But then to see this message of God divided from within whatever in itself, it must be a very high-level psychoanalysis. Even Freud was here often tempted. For example, I agree with those, especially Laplanche, I don't always follow him, who claim that the whole theory of duality Eros-Thanatos is a misstep. It's a regression into this kind of the worst sexualized cosmic duality, you know, death, life and so on. So I claim that even for Freud this gesture, it is psycho—maybe this is one of those magical moments where through psychoanalysis you see something in theology, but to see this in psychoanalysis you also need to be deep in theology, how to put it. This is what I was also improvising yesterday, when now we philosophical Lacanians are widely attacked in Europe as: this is not the real thing, you are just telling stories, the only real psychoanalysis is clinic and so on and so on. No, the only way to see what psychoanalysis is about is that it has profound ontological philosophical consequences. After psychoanalysis this naive ontology, there is a reality out there and so on is no longer, is no longer possible. And did I already mention this, interrupt me if I repeat myself, but if you think again because now some people also accuse me of being anti-Muslim and so on. Eh here things are so interesting. I read some Western purely racist Aristotelian conservative Catholic analysis which claims—no they have a problem conservative Catholics today. They see two enemies today: Muslim fundamentalism, blah-blah, and Western permissivity. And as good Stalinists you have to prove that this is a, how did they put it, Judeo-Bolshevik plot or whatever, that the two are the same. And I'm sorry if I repeat myself but I want to make the point again. In a very ingenious way and I'm tempted to agree with them, but this is an argument for some unexpected dimension in Islam, they are right. Namely, their claim is this one: that the true Christianity philosophy which fits it is Aquinas, this great realist synthesis. And incidentally there is something in this because Marxism at its worst, this dialectical materialist Stalinist system. I, when I was young, I already read the book. It's incredible. In the fifties, there was a kind of a honeymoon between dialectical materialist and neo-Thomist Catholics. The key guy here is… Johan, I think, Bocheński, a Jesuit, B-O-C-H-E-N-S-K-I, Bocheński. He wrote a book on dialectical materialism and theology where he shows great sympathy for dialectical… He says dialectical materialism is basically realist. Like reality is out there in this Aristotelian way, through our rational mind we can arrive at the inner core. What he likes together with Stalinists is that they see their own realist philosophy as opposed to what is for them the evil of modernism, solipsism, whatever, all that. And now I come to the beauty. There is an European conservative—sorry I forgot his name—Jesuit, tried to prove that both this direction, today's Islamic fundamentalism—I will not go into it, to what extent this holds, but what we designate as that—and modernity at its worst for them, for conservatives this permissivity, everything is enjoyment, you do whatever you want, no normal rules, there is no reality, we, we—there are just stories that we are telling about reality, have the same origin. This is the Stalinist moment like Judeo-Bolshevik plot, they are really the same. And you know what's the proof? That again Aquinas is the big good guy, but then the origin of evil is Avicenna and others, the Muslim misreading of Aristotle with a nominalist twist. The accusation is that Muslim philosophers who were greatly respected, you know it’s beautiful, these were much more open times the Dark Middle Ages. You know that Aquinas talks about Philosopher, he means Aristotle, he doesn't name him, and then he talks about Commentator, he means Avicenna. So the idea is that they, Muslim readers, introduced this, the first nominalist gap. You no longer have this Aristotelian harmony where reality has a hierarchic structure and through our reason we can discover this structure, universals are immanent to reality, but it's a vision where there is a gap. On the one hand you have brutal external reality and our structuring of this reality is always external to it. And you can give to this two twists: either the nominalist twist, then you arrive at in this quick overview at postmodernism, the idea being: the real is out there non-articulated, however we symbolize it, these are, you know, stories we are telling ourselves, no foundation in truth, objective truth doesn't exist. Or you do what, according to this reactionary reading, Quran is doing, that you claim: we have some speech, Quran, divine world, which is true irrespective of its relation to reality. The idea is, and this is who was the bad guy, the one whom I really hated, consider humanist, the, the Polish Pope, John Paul II. You know when he made that statement, totally wrong philosophically, that the difference between—he mentioned some Byzantine emperor who said this way—that, that Western religion even if it's religion is logos is rational, we can argue, while oriental, I mean Islam is totally irrational. You have these absolute dogmatic prescriptions, you cannot argue and so on and so forth. Not only I think this is wrong but I think this is the attitude I am aiming at. So again the idea is that in absolute dogmaticism, be it in vulgar nominalism, this organic link between reality and its conceptual structure is broken and we again, we then the modern choice is, if we abandon this Aristotelian realism, it's either postmodern relativism—reality is out there who knows what it is, we are just stories telling ourselves—or the only way out: absolute dogmaticism. I claim that and I'm not the first one. I wonder if it's translated, I think it was but it's now half-forgotten into English. Already in early twenties Ernst Bloch wrote a nice small book, Avicenna und die aristotelische Linke (Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left). Avicenna, you know the Muslim interpreter of Aristotle, and the Aristotelian left, where basically from a positive standpoint he does the same. So again I'm the first one, I'm now often attacked as I don't know Islamophobic, to attacking it but my God you know there are surprising things you can discover there. I think I already mentioned this, interrupt me if I repeat myself, but beautiful news I like to repeat here. Haiti Revolution. Look at its history, who was one of the key ideologists in the positive sense propagators, a guy called John Bookman. Obviously a reference to a guy, a black slave, but nonetheless the one who was able to read, no, among the slaves. But you know what was the book he referred to? Quran. Not as you would expect Bible or some Enlightenment book. You know, so things are very, much more complex, ambiguous here. So again to come back to you—I kind of lost almost my track—is that I agree with you, but again the point is also to change, to clarify which psychoanalysis we mean, you know. Because if you go, if you follow the path of Jung, often Freud and Jung are not opposed in the right way. Everybody has to be I think against Jung, because Jung does exactly what shouldn't be done. He reinscribes whatever we call it, he calls it in a totally wrong way Tiefenpsychologie, depth psychology, back into this pre-modern universe. For Jung, unconscious is a deeper truth. You should— Archetype. Sorry? Archetype. Yeah, but in this sense you look deep into yourself. But the ABC of Freud is that if you look deep into yourself you discover fundamental fantasies, which means fundamental lies and so on. There is nothing redeeming in it. And my friend Mladen Dolar discovered this, that there is, Freud reports of an anecdote which is one of the most beautiful that I know where he physically encountered the truth of his theory. In Slovenia there are two subterranean caves. One big one which is bullshit, already with a subterranean train for tourists. But there is another cave close to Italian border called Škocjan Cave which is big abyss, it's really terrifying, and—it’s a beautiful detail, it's not a story, I checked it up, okay story who knows whatever, it's a true story, okay whatever—you know that Dante in his youth visited that cave and his idea of hell came from there. Okay so Freud visited that cave and deep, deep into it has an almost mystical experience—not really, Freud was right with his rationalism—namely out of some misty underground corridor an old dark guy approached him. Like the idea was of course now I see the primordial father, the ultimate truth. Then looking closely at him he discovered you know who this guy was? Karl Lueger, the anti-Semitic Mayor of Vienna. And Lueger is Lüge is lie. This is a wonderful message of you go deep, deep you don't encounter the ultimate, you encounter a cheap anti-Semite, one of the intellectual fathers of Freud. Trumpism, Trumpism. That's what you go… you go deep. Yeah but one thing we had here serious debates about Trump. Admit one thing where Trump is almost Lacanian. People usually wear—I'm sorry I repeat an old joke but for the lady she deserves it—Trump, people usually have a wig but they try to look big, make it to look as real hair. But Trump has real hair which looks like a wig, admit it no? So then… then okay he is disgusting, he cannot be more, I admit. And I also agree, I'm now conceding a little bit, that you know it's wrong to say but manners don't matter and so on. Manners do matter today more than ever. I'm here a very superficial guy. Manners matter. Ethical miracles happen precisely when—not when we look deep into ourselves and discover that we are good persons. Don't do this, if you look deep into yourself you will always discover that you are a piece of shit or whatever. But that when in a way the superficial surface of your being takes over. I'm sorry, the last thing I will repeat then, then we go to serious work. Most beautiful—I'm sorry if some of you know it—most beautiful anecdote that I was told by some friends from South Africa. Forty years ago in the time of apartheid—this was a legend there I was told—there was a black demonstration and police attacked, dispersed it. And then they were following around individuals to beat them up a little bit, whatever. At that moment a miracle happened. A white—sorry a black, my God I am a beggar—a black lady who was obviously not too poor with high heels and so on, ran away from a policeman who was running after her with a baton, how you call, no? Stick. And then something happened, yes. At that moment, of course you cannot run comfortably with high heels, the woman slipped a little bit and one of her shoes fell off. At that moment this guy—and the point is the white policeman, he wasn't a good guy—but these totally superficial manners automatically for a brief moment took over. And he stopped, picked up the shoe and says, “Here, lady,” gave it back to her. And then was the magical moment, why? Because then they looked at each other like, what should we do now? Should we say okay, let's start running again or what? So they were both just embarrassed. The guy, the policeman said, “Hi, lady,” and turned around. But you know why I like this story? I'm not claiming the white policeman was really deep in himself a good guy. No, but this totally even male chauvinist superficial manners—you treat a lady like this and so on—took over and allowed him briefly to, to overcome dirty racist prejudices and so on and so on. I believe in superficial things. Maybe nonetheless, how much of yours time did I suck? Ah, I'm not doing too bad. Yeah, yeah. Okay, sorry. Now I will do something. Let's… again if I will get lost again, please believe me. I will as I promised this evening, because from here I have to run to Oxford then this evening you will get texts and it's all available to you. I mean the texts, some chapters from my forthcoming book, because you know I told you already this, I exploit you. I never prepare lectures, I read from the stuff of my next book. But today so that you will not just accuse me of doing this, I would like to do something very risky. I'm even afraid that I will be that it will be total bullshit. But it's my great private pleasure to do this. I will try to illustrate or provide an example of this basic de-centerment, let's call it in that way, that I'm talking about, this necessity of surplus, of excess, through some extremely simple examples from music. And please take this in all naivety. I asked some friends of mine who know classical music and they told me: “Okay, you are not totally wrong, it's so-so, but it's a little bit naive.” So at least it makes minimal sense to them. The basic thing I will talk about just to give you a line in advance so then we go quickly through the clips is… in music, the relationship of what in music it would be what in painting is main figure and background. How what interests me is that moment which is I think typical of Western subjectivity in music, you know. You have that more rhythmic accompaniment, preparation, and then you expect the melody, the beautiful moment to explode. Or even if it's the same melody you have it first performed in this restrained way, just string clips, and then full orchestra subjectivity takes off. I will try to prove that this is false subjectivity, that the subject is elsewhere, and I will try to prove that in authentic art melody always fails. That in true art melody has to fail, but it returns as an excess too late. My memory here I cannot restrain from sharing an obscenity. Even now it causes me nightmares. I remember when I was in high school, the first year or second, in communist Yugoslavia, the regime tried to be more modern so we had a class or two on sexual education. And it was wonderful because as you can expect it, a fat old half-bald guy came with thick spectacles. And obviously he was more embarrassed than us, and he talked about all possible things, biology, he was obviously ashamed to touch the topic itself. At the very end when we were all looking he had to say something. It was beautiful. He said, “Let's forget about the details, ultimately it's like this.” And he drew two triangles which shared the same base. Like he drew let's say one triangle like this, no? Straight. And then another triangle like this, which the top comes later. And said, “You know, that's a man, he finishes quickly, and that's a woman, afterwards, and all the problem is simply to bring these two triangles together.” I can tell you that even now I have nightmares. You know, somebody says sex, orgasm, I think about this bald man saying triangles as a total bureaucrat. So to be at this level, to remain at this level, my point is that no, it's a wrong theory. The worst thing that can happen is if these triangles come together. That's the romantic lie. Okay. First I will show you a clip, short one, it's not even two minutes. Sorry, just stop or… okay, wait a second. From—don't laugh at me—from James Bond movie You Only Live Twice. It's a scene of marriage, you know. James Bond—organized by secret service—has to pose as a poor Japanese fisherman and to make it more convincing, he has a fake ceremony to marry a Japanese girl. And you will see how this marriage scene is staged. James Bond is there waiting for the bride to come. Just listen carefully not only to the movement of the camera but to music. It’s extremely simple point. Let's do it. So first James Bond. Ah, it works yes. Can you put it up a little bit so that… Ah yeah, oh my God, perfect yeah. [Clip plays] Okay. Now the cut. [Clip plays] Okay, stop this one and prepare the next. It's an extremely simple scene but I think it's the worst of Eurocentric orientalism and so on. Did you notice how in this simple tension between the first part of the melody restrained and then when the melody goes on, this is the orientalist version of East and West. East: restrained, pre-subjective. West: the overflowing of—I mean here we don't have a different melody but just all the wealth of the violins and so on and so on. And I claim this is the fake romantic subjectivity, this fullness to be expressed, that the definition of the true art is to find a different subject which is at work already in the preparatory moment. True art: all the true art needs is the first part. So I will give you another example, and be careful—I’m very open here, maybe I'm totally wrong, maybe I'm missing the point—but from my perspective, from our romantic experience, the way we are all branded by romanticism, it's as if at least I do, something is missing. Where? You know it’s mega kitsch. You get it in all those, you know, those—I was always like to buy them—you know those for ninety-nine pence CDs, you know, the best hits of music or whatever, you know. It's Pachelbel Canon. Be attentive to this. Maybe your experience will be different. My God I hate this now, I sound as if I'm from, from LA or San Francisco, California. Okay, screw your experience, this is what you should feel. That… that it's as if it never comes to melody. It's something which sounds to us the preparatory accompaniment motive and then you wait when will the melody appear. It doesn't. Do it. Canon. You know it of course, it’s mega hit. [Clip plays] You see, it does get richer, but it never really takes off. It's—you can stop, why not—it's the same melody goes on. Now I will do something really low. We will make a direct jump to kitsch. The definition of kitsch is that you have this preparatory motive which just sounds as preparing and then you add a beautiful melody. I'm ashamed to do this here because it's from my youth. There was a disgusting band from Greece—Greece is not disgusting, but they are—called Aphrodite's Child. And they had a big hit, maybe some of you even know it, called "Rain and Tears." I've chosen that one because the preparatory—this first part, half a minute—sounds exactly like Pachelbel, but obviously is not enough, you need the beautiful melody. Let's do it. [Clip plays] You see? It's almost the same. And now I'm ready to shoot. Listen. That's still okay. That's still okay. Now here… Here I start to think. That's the definition of kitsch. As if, you know, the rhythmic accompaniment effectively, that's not enough. Okay, stop, I don't want to lose too much time. Okay. Let's go to the next one. I claim that the melody in this sense in which we enjoy today, maybe even appeared only with pre-romanticism at that time with Mozart. Mozart at least does it in a nicer way, but I suspect in my Stalinist heart he is already laying the foundations for kitsch. It's one of the most beautiful if you want examples, his Gran Partita for seven instruments serenade, the third movement. And you have exactly this structure of just something that sounds to us like accompaniment and then from up above the beautiful melody. We do Gran Partita. [Clip plays] This is the preparation. You see, ah! I already find this deeply suspicious. It's Mozart moving towards "Rain and Tears," you know, like towards a Greek holiday as you know. Okay, stop, let's be fast. Now I will move a step further and I will still try to… oh my God, we missed something. I made a mistake. Doesn't matter. Forget about it. To… where kitsch begins. Not so much Mozart as Beethoven. In Beethoven he does something: okay, let's accept the melody. But then—I’m so mad at myself because we erased the wrong… the part which was under—what Beethoven does is when he in his symphonies and so on, he has the basic motive. Then you have this symphonic structure, improvisation, acceleration, and at the end he in an unashamed way fully, forcefully repeats this motive. For me the result is obscene. We will have here the Leonore the overture, the third overture. No, wait a minute. It's full of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but please, mistake. Jump somewhere here. Here, here. [Clip plays] Yeah, here it will be. Go—sorry Julia—go half a minute a little bit… here. Okay, now we can… you can. Now you will get the melody, the basic motive I mean, sorry. [Clip plays] Now we go up. Now… If you have a little bit of a taste, this should sound kitsch. I’m so sorry I erased before it was the wrong title because I wanted to compare this with Mozart's overture to Die Zauberflöte, The Magic Flute, where you have the same structure: the motive, you have the acceleration. But then when you expect the full motive repeated with tutti, Mozart cuts it. As if there is a certain limit and I'm so sad we cannot go into this. Okay, let's stop it. Because what Mozart then does—and I spoke with some musicologists who told me I'm not totally dreaming, confirmed that—precisely because this pseudo-orgasmic moment, full melodic climax, is blocked, it reappears at the
abortion and so on, you know. Okay, but this priest, we debated, then I asked him: okay, this question, what happens on the cross? And then I also asked him, you know, all those problematic points like: I don't bring peace, I bring war. So yeah, if you have a shirt and don't have a sword, sell your shirt, buy a sword. And oh, if you don't hate your father, mother you are not—how do you read this? My God, I loved his answer. You know what his answer: “I'm so sorry, you confused me, I'm not ready now, prepared to answer.” And I exploded, I told him: “Fuck you, you had two thousand years to prepare the answer.” You know, it's not that he learned now this all the time and they don't have an answer. And most of the—ah you know why I like Protestantism? Ah there I have debates with people who are, I'm more and more getting unfortunately Protestant. Because the implication of Protestantism, of predestination, is that basically God is ethically a primitive thug playing with us. Protestantism means I will just play a game, you are redeemed, you are not, no matter what you do. It's a certain insight not only into a cruelty of God but into this mindless brutal ignorance of God. That's why my preferred theological image is the opposite one, of that one, you know, things may appear confused to us but if you get close to God you see higher order. No, God is the same as a devil. Devil is just a close-up on God. If you get too close to God you see what… You know, it's like my favorite scene we all know it, Kafka, The Castle. From down there they think castle is majestic and so on, but you remember once Joseph, no it's not Joseph K., just K. the whatever tries to climb up and he almost arrives at the castle and he sees that these are just small dirty buildings, nothing special and so on and so on. But okay, let me stop with it and claim that I totally agree with you. But then to see this message of God divided from within whatever in itself, it must be a very high-level psychoanalysis. Even Freud was here often tempted. For example, I agree with those, especially Laplanche, I don't always follow him, who claim that the whole theory of duality Eros-Thanatos is a misstep. It's a regression into this kind of the worst sexualized cosmic duality, you know, death, life and so on. So I claim that even for Freud this gesture, it is psycho—maybe this is one of those magical moments where through psychoanalysis you see something in theology, but to see this in psychoanalysis you also need to be deep in theology, how to put it. This is what I was also improvising yesterday, when now we philosophical Lacanians are widely attacked in Europe as: this is not the real thing, you are just telling stories, the only real psychoanalysis is clinic and so on and so on. No, the only way to see what psychoanalysis is about is that it has profound ontological philosophical consequences. After psychoanalysis this naive ontology, there is a reality out there and so on is no longer, is no longer possible. And did I already mention this, interrupt me if I repeat myself, but if you think again because now some people also accuse me of being anti-Muslim and so on. Eh here things are so interesting. I read some Western purely racist Aristotelian conservative Catholic analysis which claims—no they have a problem conservative Catholics today. They see two enemies today: Muslim fundamentalism, blah-blah, and Western permissivity. And as good Stalinists you have to prove that this is a, how did they put it, Judeo-Bolshevik plot or whatever, that the two are the same. And I'm sorry if I repeat myself but I want to make the point again. In a very ingenious way and I'm tempted to agree with them, but this is an argument for some unexpected dimension in Islam, they are right. Namely, their claim is this one: that the true Christianity philosophy which fits it is Aquinas, this great realist synthesis. And incidentally there is something in this because Marxism at its worst, this dialectical materialist Stalinist system. I, when I was young, I already read the book. It's incredible. In the fifties, there was a kind of a honeymoon between dialectical materialist and neo-Thomist Catholics. The key guy here is… Johan, I think, Bocheński, a Jesuit, B-O-C-H-E-N-S-K-I, Bocheński. He wrote a book on dialectical materialism and theology where he shows great sympathy for dialectical… He says dialectical materialism is basically realist. Like reality is out there in this Aristotelian way, through our rational mind we can arrive at the inner core. What he likes together with Stalinists is that they see their own realist philosophy as opposed to what is for them the evil of modernism, solipsism, whatever, all that. And now I come to the beauty. There is an European conservative—sorry I forgot his name—Jesuit, tried to prove that both this direction, today's Islamic fundamentalism—I will not go into it, to what extent this holds, but what we designate as that—and modernity at its worst for them, for conservatives this permissivity, everything is enjoyment, you do whatever you want, no normal rules, there is no reality, we, we—there are just stories that we are telling about reality, have the same origin. This is the Stalinist moment like Judeo-Bolshevik plot, they are really the same. And you know what's the proof? That again Aquinas is the big good guy, but then the origin of evil is Avicenna and others, the Muslim misreading of Aristotle with a nominalist twist. The accusation is that Muslim philosophers who were greatly respected, you know it’s beautiful, these were much more open times the Dark Middle Ages. You know that Aquinas talks about Philosopher, he means Aristotle, he doesn't name him, and then he talks about Commentator, he means Avicenna. So the idea is that they, Muslim readers, introduced this, the first nominalist gap. You no longer have this Aristotelian harmony where reality has a hierarchic structure and through our reason we can discover this structure, universals are immanent to reality, but it's a vision where there is a gap. On the one hand you have brutal external reality and our structuring of this reality is always external to it. And you can give to this two twists: either the nominalist twist, then you arrive at in this quick overview at postmodernism, the idea being: the real is out there non-articulated, however we symbolize it, these are, you know, stories we are telling ourselves, no foundation in truth, objective truth doesn't exist. Or you do what, according to this reactionary reading, Quran is doing, that you claim: we have some speech, Quran, divine world, which is true irrespective of its relation to reality. The idea is, and this is who was the bad guy, the one whom I really hated, consider humanist, the, the Polish Pope, John Paul II. You know when he made that statement, totally wrong philosophically, that the difference between—he mentioned some Byzantine emperor who said this way—that, that Western religion even if it's religion is logos is rational, we can argue, while oriental, I mean Islam is totally irrational. You have these absolute dogmatic prescriptions, you cannot argue and so on and so forth. Not only I think this is wrong but I think this is the attitude I am aiming at. So again the idea is that in absolute dogmaticism, be it in vulgar nominalism, this organic link between reality and its conceptual structure is broken and we again, we then the modern choice is, if we abandon this Aristotelian realism, it's either postmodern relativism—reality is out there who knows what it is, we are just stories telling ourselves—or the only way out: absolute dogmaticism. I claim that and I'm not the first one. I wonder if it's translated, I think it was but it's now half-forgotten into English. Already in early twenties Ernst Bloch wrote a nice small book, Avicenna und die aristotelische Linke (Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left). Avicenna, you know the Muslim interpreter of Aristotle, and the Aristotelian left, where basically from a positive standpoint he does the same. So again I'm the first one, I'm now often attacked as I don't know Islamophobic, to attacking it but my God you know there are surprising things you can discover there. I think I already mentioned this, interrupt me if I repeat myself, but beautiful news I like to repeat here. Haiti Revolution. Look at its history, who was one of the key ideologists in the positive sense propagators, a guy called John Bookman. Obviously a reference to a guy, a black slave, but nonetheless the one who was able to read, no, among the slaves. But you know what was the book he referred to? Quran. Not as you would expect Bible or some Enlightenment book. You know, so things are very, much more complex, ambiguous here. So again to come back to you—I kind of lost almost my track—is that I agree with you, but again the point is also to change, to clarify which psychoanalysis we mean, you know. Because if you go, if you follow the path of Jung, often Freud and Jung are not opposed in the right way. Everybody has to be I think against Jung, because Jung does exactly what shouldn't be done. He reinscribes whatever we call it, he calls it in a totally wrong way Tiefenpsychologie, depth psychology, back into this pre-modern universe. For Jung, unconscious is a deeper truth. You should— Archetype. Sorry? Archetype. Yeah, but in this sense you look deep into yourself. But the ABC of Freud is that if you look deep into yourself you discover fundamental fantasies, which means fundamental lies and so on. There is nothing redeeming in it. And my friend Mladen Dolar discovered this, that there is, Freud reports of an anecdote which is one of the most beautiful that I know where he physically encountered the truth of his theory. In Slovenia there are two subterranean caves. One big one which is bullshit, already with a subterranean train for tourists. But there is another cave close to Italian border called Škocjan Cave which is big abyss, it's really terrifying, and—it’s a beautiful detail, it's not a story, I checked it up, okay story who knows whatever, it's a true story, okay whatever—you know that Dante in his youth visited that cave and his idea of hell came from there. Okay so Freud visited that cave and deep, deep into it has an almost mystical experience—not really, Freud was right with his rationalism—namely out of some misty underground corridor an old dark guy approached him. Like the idea was of course now I see the primordial father, the ultimate truth. Then looking closely at him he discovered you know who this guy was? Karl Lueger, the anti-Semitic Mayor of Vienna. And Lueger is Lüge is lie. This is a wonderful message of you go deep, deep you don't encounter the ultimate, you encounter a cheap anti-Semite, one of the intellectual fathers of Freud. Trumpism, Trumpism. That's what you go… you go deep. Yeah but one thing we had here serious debates about Trump. Admit one thing where Trump is almost Lacanian. People usually wear—I'm sorry I repeat an old joke but for the lady she deserves it—Trump, people usually have a wig but they try to look big, make it to look as real hair. But Trump has real hair which looks like a wig, admit it no? So then… then okay he is disgusting, he cannot be more, I admit. And I also agree, I'm now conceding a little bit, that you know it's wrong to say but manners don't matter and so on. Manners do matter today more than ever. I'm here a very superficial guy. Manners matter. Ethical miracles happen precisely when—not when we look deep into ourselves and discover that we are good persons. Don't do this, if you look deep into yourself you will always discover that you are a piece of shit or whatever. But that when in a way the superficial surface of your being takes over. I'm sorry, the last thing I will repeat then, then we go to serious work. Most beautiful—I'm sorry if some of you know it—most beautiful anecdote that I was told by some friends from South Africa. Forty years ago in the time of apartheid—this was a legend there I was told—there was a black demonstration and police attacked, dispersed it. And then they were following around individuals to beat them up a little bit, whatever. At that moment a miracle happened. A white—sorry a black, my God I am a beggar—a black lady who was obviously not too poor with high heels and so on, ran away from a policeman who was running after her with a baton, how you call, no? Stick. And then something happened, yes. At that moment, of course you cannot run comfortably with high heels, the woman slipped a little bit and one of her shoes fell off. At that moment this guy—and the point is the white policeman, he wasn't a good guy—but these totally superficial manners automatically for a brief moment took over. And he stopped, picked up the shoe and says, “Here, lady,” gave it back to her. And then was the magical moment, why? Because then they looked at each other like, what should we do now? Should we say okay, let's start running again or what? So they were both just embarrassed. The guy, the policeman said, “Hi, lady,” and turned around. But you know why I like this story? I'm not claiming the white policeman was really deep in himself a good guy. No, but this totally even male chauvinist superficial manners—you treat a lady like this and so on—took over and allowed him briefly to, to overcome dirty racist prejudices and so on and so on. I believe in superficial things. Maybe nonetheless, how much of yours time did I suck? Ah, I'm not doing too bad. Yeah, yeah. Okay, sorry. Now I will do something. Let's… again if I will get lost again, please believe me. I will as I promised this evening, because from here I have to run to Oxford then this evening you will get texts and it's all available to you. I mean the texts, some chapters from my forthcoming book, because you know I told you already this, I exploit you. I never prepare lectures, I read from the stuff of my next book. But today so that you will not just accuse me of doing this, I would like to do something very risky. I'm even afraid that I will be that it will be total bullshit. But it's my great private pleasure to do this. I will try to illustrate or provide an example of this basic de-centerment, let's call it in that way, that I'm talking about, this necessity of surplus, of excess, through some extremely simple examples from music. And please take this in all naivety. I asked some friends of mine who know classical music and they told me: “Okay, you are not totally wrong, it's so-so, but it's a little bit naive.” So at least it makes minimal sense to them. The basic thing I will talk about just to give you a line in advance so then we go quickly through the clips is… in music, the relationship of what in music it would be what in painting is main figure and background. How what interests me is that moment which is I think typical of Western subjectivity in music, you know. You have that more rhythmic accompaniment, preparation, and then you expect the melody, the beautiful moment to explode. Or even if it's the same melody you have it first performed in this restrained way, just string clips, and then full orchestra subjectivity takes off. I will try to prove that this is false subjectivity, that the subject is elsewhere, and I will try to prove that in authentic art melody always fails. That in true art melody has to fail, but it returns as an excess too late. My memory here I cannot restrain from sharing an obscenity. Even now it causes me nightmares. I remember when I was in high school, the first year or second, in communist Yugoslavia, the regime tried to be more modern so we had a class or two on sexual education. And it was wonderful because as you can expect it, a fat old half-bald guy came with thick spectacles. And obviously he was more embarrassed than us, and he talked about all possible things, biology, he was obviously ashamed to touch the topic itself. At the very end when we were all looking he had to say something. It was beautiful. He said, “Let's forget about the details, ultimately it's like this.” And he drew two triangles which shared the same base. Like he drew let's say one triangle like this, no? Straight. And then another triangle like this, which the top comes later. And said, “You know, that's a man, he finishes quickly, and that's a woman, afterwards, and all the problem is simply to bring these two triangles together.” I can tell you that even now I have nightmares. You know, somebody says sex, orgasm, I think about this bald man saying triangles as a total bureaucrat. So to be at this level, to remain at this level, my point is that no, it's a wrong theory. The worst thing that can happen is if these triangles come together. That's the romantic lie. Okay. First I will show you a clip, short one, it's not even two minutes. Sorry, just stop or… okay, wait a second. From—don't laugh at me—from James Bond movie You Only Live Twice. It's a scene of marriage, you know. James Bond—organized by secret service—has to pose as a poor Japanese fisherman and to make it more convincing, he has a fake ceremony to marry a Japanese girl. And you will see how this marriage scene is staged. James Bond is there waiting for the bride to come. Just listen carefully not only to the movement of the camera but to music. It’s extremely simple point. Let's do it. So first James Bond. Ah, it works yes. Can you put it up a little bit so that… Ah yeah, oh my God, perfect yeah. [Clip plays] Okay. Now the cut. [Clip plays] Okay, stop this one and prepare the next. It's an extremely simple scene but I think it's the worst of Eurocentric orientalism and so on. Did you notice how in this simple tension between the first part of the melody restrained and then when the melody goes on, this is the orientalist version of East and West. East: restrained, pre-subjective. West: the overflowing of—I mean here we don't have a different melody but just all the wealth of the violins and so on and so on. And I claim this is the fake romantic subjectivity, this fullness to be expressed, that the definition of the true art is to find a different subject which is at work already in the preparatory moment. True art: all the true art needs is the first part. So I will give you another example, and be careful—I’m very open here, maybe I'm totally wrong, maybe I'm missing the point—but from my perspective, from our romantic experience, the way we are all branded by romanticism, it's as if at least I do, something is missing. Where? You know it’s mega kitsch. You get it in all those, you know, those—I was always like to buy them—you know those for ninety-nine pence CDs, you know, the best hits of music or whatever, you know. It's Pachelbel Canon. Be attentive to this. Maybe your experience will be different. My God I hate this now, I sound as if I'm from, from LA or San Francisco, California. Okay, screw your experience, this is what you should feel. That… that it's as if it never comes to melody. It's something which sounds to us the preparatory accompaniment motive and then you wait when will the melody appear. It doesn't. Do it. Canon. You know it of course, it’s mega hit. [Clip plays] You see, it does get richer, but it never really takes off. It's—you can stop, why not—it's the same melody goes on. Now I will do something really low. We will make a direct jump to kitsch. The definition of kitsch is that you have this preparatory motive which just sounds as preparing and then you add a beautiful melody. I'm ashamed to do this here because it's from my youth. There was a disgusting band from Greece—Greece is not disgusting, but they are—called Aphrodite's Child. And they had a big hit, maybe some of you even know it, called "Rain and Tears." I've chosen that one because the preparatory—this first part, half a minute—sounds exactly like Pachelbel, but obviously is not enough, you need the beautiful melody. Let's do it. [Clip plays] You see? It's almost the same. And now I'm ready to shoot. Listen. That's still okay. That's still okay. Now here… Here I start to think. That's the definition of kitsch. As if, you know, the rhythmic accompaniment effectively, that's not enough. Okay, stop, I don't want to lose too much time. Okay. Let's go to the next one. I claim that the melody in this sense in which we enjoy today, maybe even appeared only with pre-romanticism at that time with Mozart. Mozart at least does it in a nicer way, but I suspect in my Stalinist heart he is already laying the foundations for kitsch. It's one of the most beautiful if you want examples, his Gran Partita for seven instruments serenade, the third movement. And you have exactly this structure of just something that sounds to us like accompaniment and then from up above the beautiful melody. We do Gran Partita. [Clip plays] This is the preparation. You see, ah! I already find this deeply suspicious. It's Mozart moving towards "Rain and Tears," you know, like towards a Greek holiday as you know. Okay, stop, let's be fast. Now I will move a step further and I will still try to… oh my God, we missed something. I made a mistake. Doesn't matter. Forget about it. To… where kitsch begins. Not so much Mozart as Beethoven. In Beethoven he does something: okay, let's accept the melody. But then—I’m so mad at myself because we erased the wrong… the part which was under—what Beethoven does is when he in his symphonies and so on, he has the basic motive. Then you have this symphonic structure, improvisation, acceleration, and at the end he in an unashamed way fully, forcefully repeats this motive. For me the result is obscene. We will have here the Leonore the overture, the third overture. No, wait a minute. It's full of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but please, mistake. Jump somewhere here. Here, here. [Clip plays] Yeah, here it will be. Go—sorry Julia—go half a minute a little bit… here. Okay, now we can… you can. Now you will get the melody, the basic motive I mean, sorry. [Clip plays] Now we go up. Now… If you have a little bit of a taste, this should sound kitsch. I’m so sorry I erased before it was the wrong title because I wanted to compare this with Mozart's overture to Die Zauberflöte, The Magic Flute, where you have the same structure: the motive, you have the acceleration. But then when you expect the full motive repeated with tutti, Mozart cuts it. As if there is a certain limit and I'm so sad we cannot go into this. Okay, let's stop it. Because what Mozart then does—and I spoke with some musicologists who told me I'm not totally dreaming, confirmed that—precisely because this pseudo-orgasmic moment, full melodic climax, is blocked, it reappears at the
unknown
end. What's so wonderful in Mozart at its best is that when you think it's already the finale, the last stones, all of a sudden you have a final explosion. As if, you know, the structure is: should have been climax and
end. What's so wonderful in Mozart at its best is that when you think it's already the finale, the last stones, all of a sudden you have a final explosion. As if, you know, the structure is: should have been climax and
Slavoj Žižek
down. But no, the climax is thwarted and it even it as a kind of a remainder it pops up at the end. And okay. My theory here is that you only have subject proper when you have the gap between the two. The danger of romanticism is that you think subject can be not thwarted, not barred, but can fully explode in this full subjectivity. Oh my God, climatic moment of a melody and so on and so on. That's always an ideological lure. That subject means you have to have two climaxes. In this gap subject functions. I'm so sorry that I missed that one because then I had other examples of this postponed climax, but it would have been too much, we don't have time, we don't have time for that. So let me go on. Now I this was the introduction, yeah, ha-ha-ha. Now I would like to—what I can do today, just some improvisations more but based on my text too—why, why sexuality? What is so radical about Freudian notion of sexuality? It's exactly the operation I claim that I described yesterday a propos of Hegel and Kant, this transposition of epistemological obstacle into an ontological impossibility. Let's go into so-called children's sexuality or whatever. What's the problem there? The problem is to put it bluntly one of knowledge. We don't, children don't know, they know something is happening but they don't know what, and then they imagine. If you want to get a wonderful idea of this is—I mentioned it here but I think this was years ago—you saw I hope David Lynch, Blue Velvet. It's the most beautiful reading provided by my friend Michel Chion, who is I think a mega theorist of cinema, especially of sound and voice, but now he is kind of obliterated, very sad I don't know. You remember that scene, the most iconic scene whatever, when Kyle MacLachlan, the hero of the movie, watches through a closet door the weird sadomasochistic whatever you call it but it's more complex sexual interplay between the obscene paternal figure Dennis Hopper and Isabella Rossellini. And you have, and you have, you have this famous scene where Dennis Hopper before starting to make love, if you can call it making love, this brutality to her, he puts on an oxygen breathing mask and breathes heavily and shouts all the time stupid obscenities like: “Daddy wants to fuck” or—I don't even know, it’s the opposite—"Boy wants to fuck," whatever. Baby wants to fuck. Baby wants to fuck, yeah, sorry, whatever, yeah. And so what does this mean? Chion provides a beautiful reading, simple, that all this stuff, the breathing and so on, the key to all this stuff is simply that you should read this scene—but this is only one of the perspectives—as the visualization of what a small kid
down. But no, the climax is thwarted and it even it as a kind of a remainder it pops up at the end. And okay. My theory here is that you only have subject proper when you have the gap between the two. The danger of romanticism is that you think subject can be not thwarted, not barred, but can fully explode in this full subjectivity. Oh my God, climatic moment of a melody and so on and so on. That's always an ideological lure. That subject means you have to have two climaxes. In this gap subject functions. I'm so sorry that I missed that one because then I had other examples of this postponed climax, but it would have been too much, we don't have time, we don't have time for that. So let me go on. Now I this was the introduction, yeah, ha-ha-ha. Now I would like to—what I can do today, just some improvisations more but based on my text too—why, why sexuality? What is so radical about Freudian notion of sexuality? It's exactly the operation I claim that I described yesterday a propos of Hegel and Kant, this transposition of epistemological obstacle into an ontological impossibility. Let's go into so-called children's sexuality or whatever. What's the problem there? The problem is to put it bluntly one of knowledge. We don't, children don't know, they know something is happening but they don't know what, and then they imagine. If you want to get a wonderful idea of this is—I mentioned it here but I think this was years ago—you saw I hope David Lynch, Blue Velvet. It's the most beautiful reading provided by my friend Michel Chion, who is I think a mega theorist of cinema, especially of sound and voice, but now he is kind of obliterated, very sad I don't know. You remember that scene, the most iconic scene whatever, when Kyle MacLachlan, the hero of the movie, watches through a closet door the weird sadomasochistic whatever you call it but it's more complex sexual interplay between the obscene paternal figure Dennis Hopper and Isabella Rossellini. And you have, and you have, you have this famous scene where Dennis Hopper before starting to make love, if you can call it making love, this brutality to her, he puts on an oxygen breathing mask and breathes heavily and shouts all the time stupid obscenities like: “Daddy wants to fuck” or—I don't even know, it’s the opposite—"Boy wants to fuck," whatever. Baby wants to fuck. Baby wants to fuck, yeah, sorry, whatever, yeah. And so what does this mean? Chion provides a beautiful reading, simple, that all this stuff, the breathing and so on, the key to all this stuff is simply that you should read this scene—but this is only one of the perspectives—as the visualization of what a small kid
unknown
here—imagine a small kid listening at the door parents making love. And he hears the father breathing heavily. He doesn't know what, so he imagines: oh my God, my father must be breathing oxygen mask and so on and so on. It's fantasy at its
here—imagine a small kid listening at the door parents making love. And he hears the father breathing heavily. He doesn't know what, so he imagines: oh my God, my father must be breathing oxygen mask and so on and so on. It's fantasy at its
Slavoj Žižek
purest. It's based on some audio residues, you fantasize the scene. But the scene from Blue Velvet incidentally is much more complex because then it's the problem—I think it's the only consequent reading, it's the key to David Lynch—why is Dennis Hopper shouting like crazy and boasting with this brutality? I think it's the only way to read this scene from the other perspective is that Dennis Hopper is an impotent father and the whole point of this show is to, that he knows that the child is observing him, to cover up, he has to point out this brutality to cover up the fact of his impotence. And that's why Dennis Hopper fits nicely into this series of Lynchian heroes which can appear brutal but are brutal in an immanently ridiculous comic way. Like my favorite example—unfortunately I don't like the movie so much—Lost Highway. You remember the same paternal figure, that gangster who hires the hero? How: they are driving on a car and then somebody overtakes them or whatever, somebody on the street drives too fast or whatever. And then this mafia boss orders to stop, orders the
purest. It's based on some audio residues, you fantasize the scene. But the scene from Blue Velvet incidentally is much more complex because then it's the problem—I think it's the only consequent reading, it's the key to David Lynch—why is Dennis Hopper shouting like crazy and boasting with this brutality? I think it's the only way to read this scene from the other perspective is that Dennis Hopper is an impotent father and the whole point of this show is to, that he knows that the child is observing him, to cover up, he has to point out this brutality to cover up the fact of his impotence. And that's why Dennis Hopper fits nicely into this series of Lynchian heroes which can appear brutal but are brutal in an immanently ridiculous comic way. Like my favorite example—unfortunately I don't like the movie so much—Lost Highway. You remember the same paternal figure, that gangster who hires the hero? How: they are driving on a car and then somebody overtakes them or whatever, somebody on the street drives too fast or whatever. And then this mafia boss orders to stop, orders the
unknown
driver
driver
Slavoj Žižek
to stop that car, to join him, and then has an extremely violent explosion. You are afraid he will kill that driver. But you know what he is saying? It's ridiculous. He is saying quite rational things, this father. He is shouting at him, “Don't you know people are dead? Why are you driving like that?” And so on and so on. And I admire this ingenious idea of a totally ordinary warning, but it's done with this ridiculous excess and so on and so on. So okay, but let me return to it. What's the message of this scene is that that's how child sexuality is structured. You fill in the gaps through fantasies. Now comes the big Freud's conclusion: we never grow up. It's never a moment when you can say okay, now I know it and I no longer need a fantasy. I know how to do it. I simply do it. Of course you can learn how to do it physically, erection, blah-blah-blah. But you always need a fantasy like that of Kyle MacLachlan. You never fully learn it. The structure of our sexuality always remain that one, and that's what in a way Lacan means by "Il n’y a pas de rapport sexuel," that you need a phantasmatic supplement. We never— And this, what does this mean? This means that, a step further we should go here, that it's not enough to say children are curious and so on and so on. That this curiosity is not just something that is displaced, curiosity means you don't know it by those who don't yet know what sexuality is and so on and so forth. Without this ignorance, this intrigue that I don't know what's going on so I need to fantasize father breathing oxygen and so on and so on, you don't have sexuality. Without this, this element of ignorance is not just the stupid child's or whomever ignorance of what sexuality is—you got the link with that Hegelian shift from epistemology to ontology—it's constitutive of the thing itself. Let's say you know fully what is sexuality, you don't need a fantasy. Sorry, then you are not making love. You are just, I don't know, copulating in an animal way where even there I have a problem if even animals are so stupid. I doubt. Because you know as Lacan pointed out, with animals you have complex strategies of posturing, display. But one thing—and if some of you are behavior biologists maybe you know it better—the only way I was able spontaneously to differentiate between humans proper and animals: all those animals like peacocks and so on who has all this display is that—but I wonder if I'm wrong, do you know—the obvious idea would be a very strange one noted by some Darwinian evolutionists that in animal kingdom it's almost exclusively the man who is posturing, who has to have all the colored feathers and so on and so on. While with humans it is at least in our till now patriarchal society, it's the woman who is supposed to be masked with all the colors and so on and so on. So in a way, a nice tragic ironic conclusion: it's almost that animals are more feminists, you know, because there we men have to do the work to seduce, you know, and the woman says yes or no. While here… But of course it gets more complex. What I'm just trying to say here is that I hope you saw the point: first that the link between sexuality and enigma, ignorance, knowledge, it's immanent. It's not just that sexuality is mysterious in the sense that it's some secret we never go to the end of it. No, this very structure of secret is sexuality. I even think that up to a point you can sexualize a quite innocent scene, how to cook something or whatever, if you introduce into it this element of mystery and so on. And that's what, as I develop in some of my books, that's what I claim behavioral—there are cognitive Darwinian psychologists and so on who are not idiots, you learn quite interesting things from them. But there are idiots. One great idiot is unfortunately Steven Pinker. And I'm talking her with personally because I don't know how he even came to know about me, but a friend showed me that in his blog he always attacks me, politically also. Like I'm the crazy guy who doesn't seem that behaviorally evolutionary capitalism is the only thing that works and so on and so on, no? So Pinker claims—my old example, sorry if I repeat myself—Pinker claims, Steven Pinker, that, you know, when he is confronted with this big problem: why is humanity so, why don't we understand ourselves, how our brain works? Because even most of the evolutionary psychologists admit that we—what does it mean, consciousness, awareness, self-relationship? It's an enigma. It doesn't even serve a clear evolutionary function. Okay. Pinker's answer is this one: but why should we be able to understand ourselves or to ask great metaphysical questions? His answer is a deceivingly stupid one. It's that for the same reason that rabbits don't understand infinitesimal calculus. Because they don't need it. It's not part of their universe. They should know how to catch, I don't know what stupid animals or how to get at their stupid carrots or whatever, how to copulate. And he claims in the same way our language and logos, understanding, were evolutionary developed for a couple of purposes: collaboration, working, surviving, mating, seduction, whatever. And simply to do this we don't need to understand ourselves. It's simply not the evolutionary function of our reason. Yeah but, you know, there is one brutal clear counter-argument that I'm quite surprised that he doesn't mention it. Yes, but the difference is nonetheless that the stupid rabbits also are not bothered by infinitesimal calculus. It’s out. But the enigma is why do we humans, why are we so obsessed precisely by problems which are unsolvable for us? And you cannot simply say in the positivist way so okay, let's drop metaphysical questions, let's just deal with serious problems. A quick look at the history of science will show you that all great scientific discoveries emerged in this way that you tried to solve an unsolvable problem, you failed, but as a byproduct all great things emerged and so on and so on. And I think that not in a vulgar sense that even when you solve problems you secretly dream how to screw a lady—I'm sorry or whatever—it’s not that it's sexualized in this primitive way that you know, all knowledge is ultimately knowledge about sex. No, it's more fundamental is that this very structure of unsolvable problem, impossibility, is in itself formally sexualized. So when we are dealing with this intrigue now, the latest prospects of our human development, the prospect of how what will become if this—and even you mention it, it’s nice that you mention it in your transgender text, you know, this prospect of simply leaving the gendered reproduction behind through and so on, no? What will happen if this impossibility of sexual relationship disappears from our life through, I don't know, propagation becoming simply through genetic artificial insemination, blah-blah-blah? I claim, maybe I'm a conservative here, we will not lose just sexuality but precisely many of our intellectual functions. I'm not a pessimist here. I'm just saying that the guy whose book I recently read—it’s an oversimplistic book, I hate it, but he makes one good point—Yuval Harari, Homo Deus, a big bestseller. It's terribly simplified, but he makes one nice point. He says how even those critics of humanism, those preachers of post-humanity who admit rationally: yeah no free will, the time of us humans is over. They nonetheless talk in a way the position from where they talk is as if somehow we remain the same human beings with all our desires and so on what we are. They are not radical enough, they don't go to the end. They don't—how should I put it—they don't really subjectively assume what their theory is saying. They claim we have no freedom and so on and then the way they proceed, the way they argue and so on, is nonetheless as if we are still the same human beings with the freedom of argumentation and so on and so forth. So I claim that the key point is to avoid these stupid deadlocks, you know, like to either to fear artificial intelligence or whatever we call it as oh, end of humanity and so on, or even worse the—and the guy is really an idiot I claim—Ray Kurzweil's solution: it will be happy singularity, all of us will be one great collective mind and so on and so on. He even dreams that he thinks that this will happen, this jump into singularity, in the next years, so he even claims he already will be there. My— please interrupt me, always. I’m going to interrupt you now. Yeah. I think what you're saying is if no desire, no knowledge, no being and its failure, that nothing can actually displace that without displacing everything. The reason why I'm stopping you, however, is because we have half an hour and I was wondering if you would be happy to open it up for a few minutes to see if there are people who would like to intervene from the floor. I understand from my communications with Esther Leslie that in the last two classes you have intervened sort of quite spontaneously and all points throughout the conversation. Today you have sat here in complete silence. They are afraid of you, not of me, that was my hypothesis. Yes, yes. Exactly. Why is this night different from… Okay. So I thought I'd just leave—yes, I thought I'd create an opening if you're happy with that for people. Okay, okay. I agree, but just to clarify literally half a minute, even more, immediately. My position, you know, I am not saying now that it will be the end of the world, etc. I just am totally open here. I don't know what it will mean. To— okay, that's all. Ah. For one moment, it's totally against my nature. I will keep my word and please. But if you don't have enough questions I can still go on, just okay. Okay, so on Monday, I think we established the subject of the talk is between psychoanalysis and philosophy, so on Monday we established that there's a gap between psychoanalysis and philosophy and then on Tuesday you elaborated and you said that the gap exists within philosophy, within philosophy, and that psychoanalysis takes it as its object of study. The gap? Yes. Yes, but not directly like I would like to have a Freudian book and Freud giving a lecture on the ontological gap and so on. Yes, yes. Yes, but nonetheless. I'm sorry, I am very sorry, I am very sorry. You're right. I mean, there's an encounter but effectively psychoanalysis takes it as an object. Now I'll just get to the question. So today the question is this: if psychoanalysis takes philosophy as its object of study, then what is the subject in philosophy? The question is what is the subject? The Freudian subject. Here you will not get me. What is the subject of philosophy you ask? By subject you mean the agent, the one who philosophizes, not as an empirical person or do you mean the position from which subjectively a philosopher speaks or you mean subject in the sense of subject matter? That what I didn't get, you know. You know what I mean. Do you mean subject in English means subject like ego and subject like subject matter? Could I rephrase the question if you like? I was speaking about the subject in philosophy and also the subject in Lacanian psychoanalysis, so effectively I see them as being unitary. What is the subject then? If by subject, and I think I'm right, you mean subjectivity, then I follow Lacan here. It's the—the Cartesian cogito is the subject of the unconscious. It's a beautiful definition. Why? Because it's very counter-intuitive. Usually it's perceived that Cartesian subject is all abstract pure reasoning while Freud brings us to this philosophy of life, wealth, depth and so on. I think… I’m sorry, you still—I mean, the Cartesian cogito, what—what is the subject of the Cartesian cogito? This is what we're getting at. No, I don't get it. What do you mean by subject here? You mean what is it made of? In terms of subjectivity, yeah. What—what would you say it's made of? I mean, what is the substance? No substance. There's no substance. No, no, subject is—you know what's for me, I'm not bluffing. You will have in my new book, already in this one, my God, Disparities. I have, I think at the end of the second chapter, the—sorry, I'm not bluffing, allow me. The whole second chapter where I go against the so-called object-oriented ontology, which is now. Their whole point is to re-substantialise the subject. Their point is that we transcendental philosophers think there is totally apart from objects some pure thinking subject. And their point is, but subject is ultimately an object like others. A substantial object, impenetrable to itself and so on and so on. I think the paradox of what in modern tradition is called subjectivity, it's precisely that it's—I cannot do another than to use this paradoxical term—subject is an appearance which is not an appearance of anything behind it. So it’s purely phenomenological? Yeah, just appearance. Yes. So that’s where the subject is, just an appearance? You’re suggesting that— Yeah, but things get extremely complicated here. What do we mean by appearance? You know, Freudian unconscious, I claim, is not the deep substance which appears in our consciousness but, and this is how I read also fetishism theory of Marx: there are objective appearances. There are appearances of which we are not aware as appearances. Subject doesn't have a substance. Subject is not simply an appearance but it's as it were the void of—you know what I mean? Nothingness, nothingness. Absolutely, but this nothingness has a name: death drive, negativity. Can I come in here just for a second because you started with the cogito? It's a male bonding but mercilessly we allow you to intervene. I'm breaking up the male bonding. You know, I think therefore I am, to which Lacan's reply was, “I am there where I do not think to be. I am there where I am the very displacing of my thought,” which is that the subject of the unconscious is not a subject like anyone you've ever seen before. Yeah. That's the point. What bothers you? Please strike back. I mean it seriously. No, no, I mean it seriously like. You’re not happy. Something bothers you. No, I don't understand. I just what you just said now is the subject as being—the subject of the unconscious, something we've never encountered before. Now that—this is still not explaining what the subject is. You know, this is—it’s mystification. This is what bothers me: mystification. This is— Well, do you have an answer to your question? Yes, I—of course I do. Oh, let's have it. Please. Well, um. The answer to the question—I'm working on a book at the moment. I don't want to kind of… I knew that this is the case, but please go on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Please, but can you give us a hint? No, you have to answer your own question. If you have an answer, you have to share it with us. No, I don't have to. Why do I have to? Because you've been asking us or asking Slavoj. Well, I'm asking what your position is, you know. My position is precisely that subject is an appearance where there is nothing behind the appearance. It’s the subject of the void, the subject of nothingness. Yes, no, but the paradox is this one: that of course there is some kind of material foundation. I—I am not saying subject exists as void somewhere. It's a void of the body, but it's a point—but you know what I'm trying to… Listen, even—even intelligent Darwinian cognitivists admit this. For example, when they say the basic magical shock is this one. Let's say somebody studies me or anyone of us, and you look at the brain and whatever and you never encounter the subject. Where is it? Yeah, this is the whole problem between science and philosophy today: cognitive science, phenomenology and transcendental… And what I'm saying and I've written hundreds of pages on it is that whenever cognitive science tries to answer this in a positive way by saying this neural process or that is subject, it doesn't work. Never, they never encounter the void, they never encounter nothingness, there’s always more material. Okay, if you go back—this might be a help, it might not—but if you go back to Louis Hjelmslev and Roman Jakobson, the subject is the speaking "I." Yeah. And the "I" is a shifter, which means to say it is not a referent, it is only referent—it’s an indexical sign, its only reference is to the moment of utterance at which you speak, right? So the subject is an effect of discourse. That would be the Jakobsonian— Also, also. This is—this is Trump, you know, he’s a kind of subject. He’s the subject of the "I," this kind of transcendental ego that seems to hover above— I don't accept the analogy with Trump at all. No, it is. No, no, no, no, no. No, no. Precisely, precisely. Trump, look, Trump is a full material vulgar ego, you know. Please, we have another question. No, but I'm so sad we cannot go into this because I would… We’re cold. We were stuck because he was… no, no. Sorry, but just to clarify half a minute, even more, immediately. All I'm saying is just that I don't accept it that we philosophers are dreaming while cognitivists has a firm answer. They don't have it. No, I agree with you. No. Because even, for example, do you know the beautiful paradox? The more they try to explain consciousness, and you always, in all intelligent cognitivists admit it. When you explain consciousness in the sense of: you see, I'm doing things my conscious mind, but you see how this goes on at neuronal level, always the question pops up: okay, you explained this perfectly, why then consciousness? Why then doesn't it go on just as a blind process? And to be very clear, I am not here an idealist. I claim our ego is an effect of the body and so on and so on. You know what is my ultimate answer? The one that the most intelligent cognitivists like Stephen Jay Gould arrived at: that consciousness is what he said, the—this kind of accidental byproduct. Consciousness is a philosophical dead end. You
to stop that car, to join him, and then has an extremely violent explosion. You are afraid he will kill that driver. But you know what he is saying? It's ridiculous. He is saying quite rational things, this father. He is shouting at him, “Don't you know people are dead? Why are you driving like that?” And so on and so on. And I admire this ingenious idea of a totally ordinary warning, but it's done with this ridiculous excess and so on and so on. So okay, but let me return to it. What's the message of this scene is that that's how child sexuality is structured. You fill in the gaps through fantasies. Now comes the big Freud's conclusion: we never grow up. It's never a moment when you can say okay, now I know it and I no longer need a fantasy. I know how to do it. I simply do it. Of course you can learn how to do it physically, erection, blah-blah-blah. But you always need a fantasy like that of Kyle MacLachlan. You never fully learn it. The structure of our sexuality always remain that one, and that's what in a way Lacan means by "Il n’y a pas de rapport sexuel," that you need a phantasmatic supplement. We never— And this, what does this mean? This means that, a step further we should go here, that it's not enough to say children are curious and so on and so on. That this curiosity is not just something that is displaced, curiosity means you don't know it by those who don't yet know what sexuality is and so on and so forth. Without this ignorance, this intrigue that I don't know what's going on so I need to fantasize father breathing oxygen and so on and so on, you don't have sexuality. Without this, this element of ignorance is not just the stupid child's or whomever ignorance of what sexuality is—you got the link with that Hegelian shift from epistemology to ontology—it's constitutive of the thing itself. Let's say you know fully what is sexuality, you don't need a fantasy. Sorry, then you are not making love. You are just, I don't know, copulating in an animal way where even there I have a problem if even animals are so stupid. I doubt. Because you know as Lacan pointed out, with animals you have complex strategies of posturing, display. But one thing—and if some of you are behavior biologists maybe you know it better—the only way I was able spontaneously to differentiate between humans proper and animals: all those animals like peacocks and so on who has all this display is that—but I wonder if I'm wrong, do you know—the obvious idea would be a very strange one noted by some Darwinian evolutionists that in animal kingdom it's almost exclusively the man who is posturing, who has to have all the colored feathers and so on and so on. While with humans it is at least in our till now patriarchal society, it's the woman who is supposed to be masked with all the colors and so on and so on. So in a way, a nice tragic ironic conclusion: it's almost that animals are more feminists, you know, because there we men have to do the work to seduce, you know, and the woman says yes or no. While here… But of course it gets more complex. What I'm just trying to say here is that I hope you saw the point: first that the link between sexuality and enigma, ignorance, knowledge, it's immanent. It's not just that sexuality is mysterious in the sense that it's some secret we never go to the end of it. No, this very structure of secret is sexuality. I even think that up to a point you can sexualize a quite innocent scene, how to cook something or whatever, if you introduce into it this element of mystery and so on. And that's what, as I develop in some of my books, that's what I claim behavioral—there are cognitive Darwinian psychologists and so on who are not idiots, you learn quite interesting things from them. But there are idiots. One great idiot is unfortunately Steven Pinker. And I'm talking her with personally because I don't know how he even came to know about me, but a friend showed me that in his blog he always attacks me, politically also. Like I'm the crazy guy who doesn't seem that behaviorally evolutionary capitalism is the only thing that works and so on and so on, no? So Pinker claims—my old example, sorry if I repeat myself—Pinker claims, Steven Pinker, that, you know, when he is confronted with this big problem: why is humanity so, why don't we understand ourselves, how our brain works? Because even most of the evolutionary psychologists admit that we—what does it mean, consciousness, awareness, self-relationship? It's an enigma. It doesn't even serve a clear evolutionary function. Okay. Pinker's answer is this one: but why should we be able to understand ourselves or to ask great metaphysical questions? His answer is a deceivingly stupid one. It's that for the same reason that rabbits don't understand infinitesimal calculus. Because they don't need it. It's not part of their universe. They should know how to catch, I don't know what stupid animals or how to get at their stupid carrots or whatever, how to copulate. And he claims in the same way our language and logos, understanding, were evolutionary developed for a couple of purposes: collaboration, working, surviving, mating, seduction, whatever. And simply to do this we don't need to understand ourselves. It's simply not the evolutionary function of our reason. Yeah but, you know, there is one brutal clear counter-argument that I'm quite surprised that he doesn't mention it. Yes, but the difference is nonetheless that the stupid rabbits also are not bothered by infinitesimal calculus. It’s out. But the enigma is why do we humans, why are we so obsessed precisely by problems which are unsolvable for us? And you cannot simply say in the positivist way so okay, let's drop metaphysical questions, let's just deal with serious problems. A quick look at the history of science will show you that all great scientific discoveries emerged in this way that you tried to solve an unsolvable problem, you failed, but as a byproduct all great things emerged and so on and so on. And I think that not in a vulgar sense that even when you solve problems you secretly dream how to screw a lady—I'm sorry or whatever—it’s not that it's sexualized in this primitive way that you know, all knowledge is ultimately knowledge about sex. No, it's more fundamental is that this very structure of unsolvable problem, impossibility, is in itself formally sexualized. So when we are dealing with this intrigue now, the latest prospects of our human development, the prospect of how what will become if this—and even you mention it, it’s nice that you mention it in your transgender text, you know, this prospect of simply leaving the gendered reproduction behind through and so on, no? What will happen if this impossibility of sexual relationship disappears from our life through, I don't know, propagation becoming simply through genetic artificial insemination, blah-blah-blah? I claim, maybe I'm a conservative here, we will not lose just sexuality but precisely many of our intellectual functions. I'm not a pessimist here. I'm just saying that the guy whose book I recently read—it’s an oversimplistic book, I hate it, but he makes one good point—Yuval Harari, Homo Deus, a big bestseller. It's terribly simplified, but he makes one nice point. He says how even those critics of humanism, those preachers of post-humanity who admit rationally: yeah no free will, the time of us humans is over. They nonetheless talk in a way the position from where they talk is as if somehow we remain the same human beings with all our desires and so on what we are. They are not radical enough, they don't go to the end. They don't—how should I put it—they don't really subjectively assume what their theory is saying. They claim we have no freedom and so on and then the way they proceed, the way they argue and so on, is nonetheless as if we are still the same human beings with the freedom of argumentation and so on and so forth. So I claim that the key point is to avoid these stupid deadlocks, you know, like to either to fear artificial intelligence or whatever we call it as oh, end of humanity and so on, or even worse the—and the guy is really an idiot I claim—Ray Kurzweil's solution: it will be happy singularity, all of us will be one great collective mind and so on and so on. He even dreams that he thinks that this will happen, this jump into singularity, in the next years, so he even claims he already will be there. My— please interrupt me, always. I’m going to interrupt you now. Yeah. I think what you're saying is if no desire, no knowledge, no being and its failure, that nothing can actually displace that without displacing everything. The reason why I'm stopping you, however, is because we have half an hour and I was wondering if you would be happy to open it up for a few minutes to see if there are people who would like to intervene from the floor. I understand from my communications with Esther Leslie that in the last two classes you have intervened sort of quite spontaneously and all points throughout the conversation. Today you have sat here in complete silence. They are afraid of you, not of me, that was my hypothesis. Yes, yes. Exactly. Why is this night different from… Okay. So I thought I'd just leave—yes, I thought I'd create an opening if you're happy with that for people. Okay, okay. I agree, but just to clarify literally half a minute, even more, immediately. My position, you know, I am not saying now that it will be the end of the world, etc. I just am totally open here. I don't know what it will mean. To— okay, that's all. Ah. For one moment, it's totally against my nature. I will keep my word and please. But if you don't have enough questions I can still go on, just okay. Okay, so on Monday, I think we established the subject of the talk is between psychoanalysis and philosophy, so on Monday we established that there's a gap between psychoanalysis and philosophy and then on Tuesday you elaborated and you said that the gap exists within philosophy, within philosophy, and that psychoanalysis takes it as its object of study. The gap? Yes. Yes, but not directly like I would like to have a Freudian book and Freud giving a lecture on the ontological gap and so on. Yes, yes. Yes, but nonetheless. I'm sorry, I am very sorry, I am very sorry. You're right. I mean, there's an encounter but effectively psychoanalysis takes it as an object. Now I'll just get to the question. So today the question is this: if psychoanalysis takes philosophy as its object of study, then what is the subject in philosophy? The question is what is the subject? The Freudian subject. Here you will not get me. What is the subject of philosophy you ask? By subject you mean the agent, the one who philosophizes, not as an empirical person or do you mean the position from which subjectively a philosopher speaks or you mean subject in the sense of subject matter? That what I didn't get, you know. You know what I mean. Do you mean subject in English means subject like ego and subject like subject matter? Could I rephrase the question if you like? I was speaking about the subject in philosophy and also the subject in Lacanian psychoanalysis, so effectively I see them as being unitary. What is the subject then? If by subject, and I think I'm right, you mean subjectivity, then I follow Lacan here. It's the—the Cartesian cogito is the subject of the unconscious. It's a beautiful definition. Why? Because it's very counter-intuitive. Usually it's perceived that Cartesian subject is all abstract pure reasoning while Freud brings us to this philosophy of life, wealth, depth and so on. I think… I’m sorry, you still—I mean, the Cartesian cogito, what—what is the subject of the Cartesian cogito? This is what we're getting at. No, I don't get it. What do you mean by subject here? You mean what is it made of? In terms of subjectivity, yeah. What—what would you say it's made of? I mean, what is the substance? No substance. There's no substance. No, no, subject is—you know what's for me, I'm not bluffing. You will have in my new book, already in this one, my God, Disparities. I have, I think at the end of the second chapter, the—sorry, I'm not bluffing, allow me. The whole second chapter where I go against the so-called object-oriented ontology, which is now. Their whole point is to re-substantialise the subject. Their point is that we transcendental philosophers think there is totally apart from objects some pure thinking subject. And their point is, but subject is ultimately an object like others. A substantial object, impenetrable to itself and so on and so on. I think the paradox of what in modern tradition is called subjectivity, it's precisely that it's—I cannot do another than to use this paradoxical term—subject is an appearance which is not an appearance of anything behind it. So it’s purely phenomenological? Yeah, just appearance. Yes. So that’s where the subject is, just an appearance? You’re suggesting that— Yeah, but things get extremely complicated here. What do we mean by appearance? You know, Freudian unconscious, I claim, is not the deep substance which appears in our consciousness but, and this is how I read also fetishism theory of Marx: there are objective appearances. There are appearances of which we are not aware as appearances. Subject doesn't have a substance. Subject is not simply an appearance but it's as it were the void of—you know what I mean? Nothingness, nothingness. Absolutely, but this nothingness has a name: death drive, negativity. Can I come in here just for a second because you started with the cogito? It's a male bonding but mercilessly we allow you to intervene. I'm breaking up the male bonding. You know, I think therefore I am, to which Lacan's reply was, “I am there where I do not think to be. I am there where I am the very displacing of my thought,” which is that the subject of the unconscious is not a subject like anyone you've ever seen before. Yeah. That's the point. What bothers you? Please strike back. I mean it seriously. No, no, I mean it seriously like. You’re not happy. Something bothers you. No, I don't understand. I just what you just said now is the subject as being—the subject of the unconscious, something we've never encountered before. Now that—this is still not explaining what the subject is. You know, this is—it’s mystification. This is what bothers me: mystification. This is— Well, do you have an answer to your question? Yes, I—of course I do. Oh, let's have it. Please. Well, um. The answer to the question—I'm working on a book at the moment. I don't want to kind of… I knew that this is the case, but please go on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Please, but can you give us a hint? No, you have to answer your own question. If you have an answer, you have to share it with us. No, I don't have to. Why do I have to? Because you've been asking us or asking Slavoj. Well, I'm asking what your position is, you know. My position is precisely that subject is an appearance where there is nothing behind the appearance. It’s the subject of the void, the subject of nothingness. Yes, no, but the paradox is this one: that of course there is some kind of material foundation. I—I am not saying subject exists as void somewhere. It's a void of the body, but it's a point—but you know what I'm trying to… Listen, even—even intelligent Darwinian cognitivists admit this. For example, when they say the basic magical shock is this one. Let's say somebody studies me or anyone of us, and you look at the brain and whatever and you never encounter the subject. Where is it? Yeah, this is the whole problem between science and philosophy today: cognitive science, phenomenology and transcendental… And what I'm saying and I've written hundreds of pages on it is that whenever cognitive science tries to answer this in a positive way by saying this neural process or that is subject, it doesn't work. Never, they never encounter the void, they never encounter nothingness, there’s always more material. Okay, if you go back—this might be a help, it might not—but if you go back to Louis Hjelmslev and Roman Jakobson, the subject is the speaking "I." Yeah. And the "I" is a shifter, which means to say it is not a referent, it is only referent—it’s an indexical sign, its only reference is to the moment of utterance at which you speak, right? So the subject is an effect of discourse. That would be the Jakobsonian— Also, also. This is—this is Trump, you know, he’s a kind of subject. He’s the subject of the "I," this kind of transcendental ego that seems to hover above— I don't accept the analogy with Trump at all. No, it is. No, no, no, no, no. No, no. Precisely, precisely. Trump, look, Trump is a full material vulgar ego, you know. Please, we have another question. No, but I'm so sad we cannot go into this because I would… We’re cold. We were stuck because he was… no, no. Sorry, but just to clarify half a minute, even more, immediately. All I'm saying is just that I don't accept it that we philosophers are dreaming while cognitivists has a firm answer. They don't have it. No, I agree with you. No. Because even, for example, do you know the beautiful paradox? The more they try to explain consciousness, and you always, in all intelligent cognitivists admit it. When you explain consciousness in the sense of: you see, I'm doing things my conscious mind, but you see how this goes on at neuronal level, always the question pops up: okay, you explained this perfectly, why then consciousness? Why then doesn't it go on just as a blind process? And to be very clear, I am not here an idealist. I claim our ego is an effect of the body and so on and so on. You know what is my ultimate answer? The one that the most intelligent cognitivists like Stephen Jay Gould arrived at: that consciousness is what he said, the—this kind of accidental byproduct. Consciousness is a philosophical dead end. You
unknown
know, you can spend all your time thinking about it, trying to solve it, there's no real definition for it. No, ah! I would just add— And subjectivity, on the other hand, I think has— No, no, no. Here things get more complicated because I think that between subjectivity and consciousness there is the… Okay, we have enough time to get together over a coffee or something. Yes, I agree. I’d like to watch it though. Okay, sorry. A fine wall. I'll try to be quick. On Thursday, you had this wonderful riff that was kind of reminding me of George Carlin when you took the
know, you can spend all your time thinking about it, trying to solve it, there's no real definition for it. No, ah! I would just add— And subjectivity, on the other hand, I think has— No, no, no. Here things get more complicated because I think that between subjectivity and consciousness there is the… Okay, we have enough time to get together over a coffee or something. Yes, I agree. I’d like to watch it though. Okay, sorry. A fine wall. I'll try to be quick. On Thursday, you had this wonderful riff that was kind of reminding me of George Carlin when you took the
Slavoj Žižek
twenty or so different sexualities and talked about
twenty or so different sexualities and talked about
unknown
what the class version of those
what the class version of those
Slavoj Žižek
would be. Yeah. Um, and I'm wondering, now that you just mentioned how ignorance is immanent to the sexual relation, is ignorance also immanent to the class relation or is there something different in that formation? There is, there is ignorance there also, but I will precisely try to explain
would be. Yeah. Um, and I'm wondering, now that you just mentioned how ignorance is immanent to the sexual relation, is ignorance also immanent to the class relation or is there something different in that formation? There is, there is ignorance there also, but I will precisely try to explain
unknown
to you in what sense. A very
to you in what sense. A very
Slavoj Žižek
simple example. Let's take once there was the distinction between left and right. You
simple example. Let's take once there was the distinction between left and right. You
unknown
know what basic ignorance I see there? And for me, it's not a negative ignorance, it's its own solution. The paradox of left and right is that there is no neutral definition. Every
know what basic ignorance I see there? And for me, it's not a negative ignorance, it's its own solution. The paradox of left and right is that there is no neutral definition. Every
Slavoj Žižek
definition that you try of what is left, what is right will involve already a leftist or a rightist position. If you ask a right-winger what's the distinction between left and right, the standard conservative answer is: we the right-wing
definition that you try of what is left, what is right will involve already a leftist or a rightist position. If you ask a right-winger what's the distinction between left and right, the standard conservative answer is: we the right-wing
unknown
are social stability, hierarchy; the left are those on the fringes, confusion, blah-blah. If you ask a leftist, you will get a totally different answer. This is for me the real of an antagonism where you cannot symbolically fix it. In the same way
are social stability, hierarchy; the left are those on the fringes, confusion, blah-blah. If you ask a leftist, you will get a totally different answer. This is for me the real of an antagonism where you cannot symbolically fix it. In the same way
Slavoj Žižek
as for
as for
unknown
Lacan
Lacan
Slavoj Žižek
there is no signifier of sexual difference and so on and so on, you cannot define class difference in an objective way. Every approach to class struggle is already from a position of class struggle. Okay, just quickly if I may, but you mentioned, and then you said in another way
there is no signifier of sexual difference and so on and so on, you cannot define class difference in an objective way. Every approach to class struggle is already from a position of class struggle. Okay, just quickly if I may, but you mentioned, and then you said in another way
unknown
quite
quite
Slavoj Žižek
beautifully, that without ignorance you don't have sexuality. Yes. Without this ignorance do you still have class? But wait a minute. I did something else, you should also include here. I didn't say simply ignorance is the last word. What I said is that the solution is to shift, transmit, transpose ignorance into object—into impossibility, obstacle, antagonism in the thing itself. That's what I'm
beautifully, that without ignorance you don't have sexuality. Yes. Without this ignorance do you still have class? But wait a minute. I did something else, you should also include here. I didn't say simply ignorance is the last word. What I said is that the solution is to shift, transmit, transpose ignorance into object—into impossibility, obstacle, antagonism in the thing itself. That's what I'm
unknown
saying, so I'm not a mystic of—I'm not saying sexuality, we cannot know it. I said sexuality is the very structure of this not knowing. It's not, I'm not mystifying sexuality. I'm the last guy to say sexuality is the ultimate mystery who knows what goes on and so on and so on. That’s not what I was thinking. It’s no—no, I know, I'm
saying, so I'm not a mystic of—I'm not saying sexuality, we cannot know it. I said sexuality is the very structure of this not knowing. It's not, I'm not mystifying sexuality. I'm the last guy to say sexuality is the ultimate mystery who knows what goes on and so on and so on. That’s not what I was thinking. It’s no—no, I know, I'm
Slavoj Žižek
sorry. Here I'm ready to be—if I were to be in the sexual act, no—sorry, you will not like me now—and someone would tell me… We need one more question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Immediately, immediately. “Isn't sexuality something mysterious, we don't know what it is?” I would say, “Just shut up and go on F,” you know like. Okay, sorry, did my vulgarity… New question, please. So if in your ontology you have a de-substantialized subject and also a de-substantialized reality, then what is the link between what the subject does and the way that reality is? So for example, if you have antagonisms in the end of your absolute recall you have this like speculative unveiling of a lot of antagonisms at hint, you know that get filled up by this state identity, blah-blah-blah. And then of course you can say that even if for example I as a subject don't transpose the gap into, back into the object, of course it's already
sorry. Here I'm ready to be—if I were to be in the sexual act, no—sorry, you will not like me now—and someone would tell me… We need one more question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Immediately, immediately. “Isn't sexuality something mysterious, we don't know what it is?” I would say, “Just shut up and go on F,” you know like. Okay, sorry, did my vulgarity… New question, please. So if in your ontology you have a de-substantialized subject and also a de-substantialized reality, then what is the link between what the subject does and the way that reality is? So for example, if you have antagonisms in the end of your absolute recall you have this like speculative unveiling of a lot of antagonisms at hint, you know that get filled up by this state identity, blah-blah-blah. And then of course you can say that even if for example I as a subject don't transpose the gap into, back into the object, of course it's already
unknown
antagonistic. But then what's the
antagonistic. But then what's the
Slavoj Žižek
role of the subject? For example, you cannot just remain in that position saying, “Okay, it's an antagonism.” You have to make a choice. And then a lot of times you get back into this like pseudo-Nietzschean, Deleuzian idea of like—not you but if you deal with this problem—of like actualizing something in the virtual. And I don't feel like that's what you want to do. But then if you defend a certain position which goes beyond saying, “Okay, there's an antagonism between two elements, but I'm choosing for example the universally
role of the subject? For example, you cannot just remain in that position saying, “Okay, it's an antagonism.” You have to make a choice. And then a lot of times you get back into this like pseudo-Nietzschean, Deleuzian idea of like—not you but if you deal with this problem—of like actualizing something in the virtual. And I don't feel like that's what you want to do. But then if you defend a certain position which goes beyond saying, “Okay, there's an antagonism between two elements, but I'm choosing for example the universally
unknown
excluded element,” then what do you do? And
excluded element,” then what do you do? And
Slavoj Žižek
that also links back to what you say about the future being determined but we
that also links back to what you say about the future being determined but we
unknown
can change the past. Of course, but then you can have revisionism, whatever. So what's like the… and there again you get a Nietzschean problem like selection. What's your criterion of selection
can change the past. Of course, but then you can have revisionism, whatever. So what's like the… and there again you get a Nietzschean problem like selection. What's your criterion of selection
Slavoj Žižek
when you do a certain operation? Very nice question. Again, just sorry, I'm so sad that we don't have more time.
when you do a certain operation? Very nice question. Again, just sorry, I'm so sad that we don't have more time.
unknown
Because you know what I'm trying to do in these speculations is the following—I will do this a little bit in this
Because you know what I'm trying to do in these speculations is the following—I will do this a little bit in this
unknown
book, a little bit in the next book, I'm crazy because I'm already finishing—I claim that like I'm really trying
book, a little bit in the next book, I'm crazy because I'm already finishing—I claim that like I'm really trying
unknown
to give some answers to this big question, like: but okay, where do I stand ontologically, is there
to give some answers to this big question, like: but okay, where do I stand ontologically, is there
unknown
any reality or whatever? And what I'm trying to do with maybe some sometimes eclectic
any reality or whatever? And what I'm trying to do with maybe some sometimes eclectic
Slavoj Žižek
references from quantum physics
references from quantum physics
unknown
to politics to symbolic logic and so on is to claim—okay, this will be now meaningless
to politics to symbolic logic and so on is to claim—okay, this will be now meaningless
Slavoj Žižek
formulas if I, but I will risk them—that think there are things because they are impossible. Actual things exist as a reaction to their own impossibility as it were. Like there are sexual pleasures because sexual relationship is impossible. Society exists because class struggle makes it impossible. And I even think cosmologically—I'm very afraid to say this, one can get easily caught in speculations—isn't something like this the ultimate lesson, if I understand it correctly—but I did debate with some of them—of quantum physics? That you have a certain, let's
formulas if I, but I will risk them—that think there are things because they are impossible. Actual things exist as a reaction to their own impossibility as it were. Like there are sexual pleasures because sexual relationship is impossible. Society exists because class struggle makes it impossible. And I even think cosmologically—I'm very afraid to say this, one can get easily caught in speculations—isn't something like this the ultimate lesson, if I understand it correctly—but I did debate with some of them—of quantum physics? That you have a certain, let's
unknown
call it—you know the great danger in philosophically reading quantum physics is to read it in a Deleuzian way. By
call it—you know the great danger in philosophically reading quantum physics is to read it in a Deleuzian way. By
Slavoj Žižek
Deleuzian way I mean that you posit quantum oscillations and some kind of happy field of multitudes and then oh, the bad guy, collapse of one reality and so on. But no, we, the circle is full. We have this multitude of oscillations
Deleuzian way I mean that you posit quantum oscillations and some kind of happy field of multitudes and then oh, the bad guy, collapse of one reality and so on. But no, we, the circle is full. We have this multitude of oscillations
unknown
precisely because it's a reaction to a fundamental impossibility.
precisely because it's a reaction to a fundamental impossibility.
unknown
Pleur—here I disagree even with my otherwise good friend Alain Badiou, who posits as the starting point this: the real as the multitude of multitudes. And then somehow it gets caught into paradoxes through all this logical paradoxes,
Pleur—here I disagree even with my otherwise good friend Alain Badiou, who posits as the starting point this: the real as the multitude of multitudes. And then somehow it gets caught into paradoxes through all this logical paradoxes,
unknown
set theory. I think that there is a tension, a gap from the very beginning. There is multiplicity because one is impossible. Because contradiction is at the very
set theory. I think that there is a tension, a gap from the very beginning. There is multiplicity because one is impossible. Because contradiction is at the very
unknown
beginning.
beginning.
Slavoj Žižek
And I'm just trying ontologically… so when you asked me but then if subject is a lack, if substance is a lack—well they are not a lack in the same way. This is how I read Hegel
And I'm just trying ontologically… so when you asked me but then if subject is a lack, if substance is a lack—well they are not a lack in the same way. This is how I read Hegel
unknown
when he says the key
when he says the key
Slavoj Žižek
point is to grasp the absolute not only as substance but also as subject. Usually this is totally misread as if Hegel wants to say substance, the ultimate foundation of all
point is to grasp the absolute not only as substance but also as subject. Usually this is totally misread as if Hegel wants to say substance, the ultimate foundation of all
unknown
being,
being,
Slavoj Žižek
is a personal like subject, God or an absolute subject. No, what Hegel's statement substance is subject means is subject—subject is for Hegel always something linked to failure, illusion and so on. And what Hegel is saying is that substance is in itself thwarted, blocked, structured around its own impossibility. And you find this in precisely the guys that you mentioned, Hjelmslev and all those. They were not idiots. Maybe it's time to rehabilitate them against this Chomsky linguistics—a great idea Chomsky, but I don't totally buy his linguistics—they saw many great things. Precisely this thing that for example Lévi-Strauss when he deals with this empty signifier mana or what, that in order
is a personal like subject, God or an absolute subject. No, what Hegel's statement substance is subject means is subject—subject is for Hegel always something linked to failure, illusion and so on. And what Hegel is saying is that substance is in itself thwarted, blocked, structured around its own impossibility. And you find this in precisely the guys that you mentioned, Hjelmslev and all those. They were not idiots. Maybe it's time to rehabilitate them against this Chomsky linguistics—a great idea Chomsky, but I don't totally buy his linguistics—they saw many great things. Precisely this thing that for example Lévi-Strauss when he deals with this empty signifier mana or what, that in order
unknown
to have a system you have an element which embodies the very impossibility of this system. Suture, suture. Yeah, and there is another misreading I hope you agree with because the notion of suture was deeply misappropriated again in this Deleuzian way as if there is happy multitude
to have a system you have an element which embodies the very impossibility of this system. Suture, suture. Yeah, and there is another misreading I hope you agree with because the notion of suture was deeply misappropriated again in this Deleuzian way as if there is happy multitude
Slavoj Žižek
and then suture means a bad oedipal totalization which tries to suture… no,
and then suture means a bad oedipal totalization which tries to suture… no,
unknown
no, suture is from the very beginning there. Suture, yeah.
no, suture is from the very beginning there. Suture, yeah.
unknown
Suture
Suture
unknown
is not a secondary suturing as they put it. But can I link that back if you have for example your Sublime Object of Ideology, you also work with substance and subject and then you also work with Benjamin's Theses on History and changing a certain dimension of it again? Then you have the part of positing presuppositions and presupposing
is not a secondary suturing as they put it. But can I link that back if you have for example your Sublime Object of Ideology, you also work with substance and subject and then you also work with Benjamin's Theses on History and changing a certain dimension of it again? Then you have the part of positing presuppositions and presupposing
Slavoj Žižek
the positing. So how do you link the subject's activity to reality, to the formation of what then Deleuze would call the virtual dimension of reality? Because that's a ethical problem maybe, but how do you conceive of that act of the subject? I will put it this way—these are really substantial questions, good—and my first point would have been this one maybe. Maybe you will claim I didn't answer, but I think I will give you at least, you know, like to be evil towards myself. When somebody asks me a difficult question, my strategy is—which I even don't understand well—my strategy is usually to say whatever I want to say, something, and then I say I know I didn't answer a question but did you see how I gave a first, made the first step towards an answer? And then the guy is usually polite
the positing. So how do you link the subject's activity to reality, to the formation of what then Deleuze would call the virtual dimension of reality? Because that's a ethical problem maybe, but how do you conceive of that act of the subject? I will put it this way—these are really substantial questions, good—and my first point would have been this one maybe. Maybe you will claim I didn't answer, but I think I will give you at least, you know, like to be evil towards myself. When somebody asks me a difficult question, my strategy is—which I even don't understand well—my strategy is usually to say whatever I want to say, something, and then I say I know I didn't answer a question but did you see how I gave a first, made the first step towards an answer? And then the guy is usually polite
unknown
enough to say, “Yes, yes,
enough to say, “Yes, yes,
Slavoj Žižek
you did it.” But I will try to do it now. You answered a very important question. You know, like it's popular to say, for example, all this Marxist from linguist from Michael Bakhtin and so on, this false appropriation of late Wittgenstein how language does not only mirror, reflect from outside reality, language is always part of a life world, we do things with this and so on and so on. What interests me much more is why do we even have to fight for this inclusion, where does the gap come from? The true miracle of language is not that we are always part of reality, but how can we even imagine that we are not? I think the ultimate practical act
you did it.” But I will try to do it now. You answered a very important question. You know, like it's popular to say, for example, all this Marxist from linguist from Michael Bakhtin and so on, this false appropriation of late Wittgenstein how language does not only mirror, reflect from outside reality, language is always part of a life world, we do things with this and so on and so on. What interests me much more is why do we even have to fight for this inclusion, where does the gap come from? The true miracle of language is not that we are always part of reality, but how can we even imagine that we are not? I think the ultimate practical act
unknown
is not the act of intervening, but the act of acquiring a distance from which you intervene or not. That's the—that’s the ultimate act. The ultimate act—here Marx doesn't always
is not the act of intervening, but the act of acquiring a distance from which you intervene or not. That's the—that’s the ultimate act. The ultimate act—here Marx doesn't always
unknown
get it right and Hegel does—the ultimate act is the act of stepping out. And here I—did I use it here or at some other stupid talk yesterday? I don't know where I was—it’s the, you know, I'm a primitive guy, only now I discovered this: the beautiful ambiguity of the Greek term stasis. Which means at the same time stasis as static, state—ah my God you can correct me if I'm… but doesn't it also mean with some historians stasis means resisting, standing up in the sense of I stand up to you? I think they are ultimately the same. Reality is moving and Benjamin knew this in dialectic in Stillstand, at standstill. The ultimate act of resistance is not saying no, but saying yes in an excessive way, you know like I stand up, I remain static while everything is moving and so on and so on. So for me it's the big problem of language and practice: it's not this bullshit, yes, language is also part of a life world. No, it's not. Language at the same time has a distance of negativity, can ruin a life world and so on.
get it right and Hegel does—the ultimate act is the act of stepping out. And here I—did I use it here or at some other stupid talk yesterday? I don't know where I was—it’s the, you know, I'm a primitive guy, only now I discovered this: the beautiful ambiguity of the Greek term stasis. Which means at the same time stasis as static, state—ah my God you can correct me if I'm… but doesn't it also mean with some historians stasis means resisting, standing up in the sense of I stand up to you? I think they are ultimately the same. Reality is moving and Benjamin knew this in dialectic in Stillstand, at standstill. The ultimate act of resistance is not saying no, but saying yes in an excessive way, you know like I stand up, I remain static while everything is moving and so on and so on. So for me it's the big problem of language and practice: it's not this bullshit, yes, language is also part of a life world. No, it's not. Language at the same time has a distance of negativity, can ruin a life world and so on.
Slavoj Žižek
I didn't but—sorry we've got another question. I’m sorry, I'm sorry, it's women's oppression, I wanted to answer you. I know I'm on… oh my God, yeah, let's take down… Okay, do we agree on how long the question is and how long the answer is? We have time for this question and possibly one other and possibly not. Okay, yeah, one of them. Hi, you spoke at the beginning about your reading of Christianity as the religion where the Christian can believe in the God who just believes in himself, which you— Who does not believe in himself. Which you cite your evidence as that of the cry of dereliction of Christ on the cross. You also write a lot about Paul in conversation with Badiou and Schmitt and Agamben and the sublation of law, sin as law etc. But the Paul when Paul writes, he doesn't seem to be aware of the cry of dereliction of Christ on the cross saying that. And he writes decades before the Gospels where they then record that. So what I'm wondering is are your writings and your opinions on Paul and Christ separate or are they connected? And if they're connected, is Paul aware of Christ on the cross, does that affect what he believes about the Christian subject? Maybe Paul, of course he didn't read Gospels because from what I know the earliest text of Christianity that we have are Paul's letters. They come earlier than the Gospels. But nonetheless I will give you an extremely naive answer. From what I know, isn't it that nonetheless Paul speaks a lot about the death of Christ and resurrection? So he did know about death of Christ or resurrection. And that's what I—that’s why I am to put it like this for Paul. You know what Paul saw so clearly? That Kierkegaard also repeated clearly that: the message of Christ is not what he claims. What he claims is a bullshit that every average preacher could have said. The uniqueness for Christ is as intelligent theologians say that his existence itself is his ultimate message. It's not what he says. This is why and that's what I find the wonderful ultimate almost perversity of Paul. Did you notice how Paul is—this was often noted—extremely indifferent towards what Christ did or said? Fuck that, the only thing that ultimately interests Paul about Christ is that the guy dropped dead and resurrection and then in this way he redeemed us. You have none of this: Christ visited those disciples, did this, this, that and so on.
I didn't but—sorry we've got another question. I’m sorry, I'm sorry, it's women's oppression, I wanted to answer you. I know I'm on… oh my God, yeah, let's take down… Okay, do we agree on how long the question is and how long the answer is? We have time for this question and possibly one other and possibly not. Okay, yeah, one of them. Hi, you spoke at the beginning about your reading of Christianity as the religion where the Christian can believe in the God who just believes in himself, which you— Who does not believe in himself. Which you cite your evidence as that of the cry of dereliction of Christ on the cross. You also write a lot about Paul in conversation with Badiou and Schmitt and Agamben and the sublation of law, sin as law etc. But the Paul when Paul writes, he doesn't seem to be aware of the cry of dereliction of Christ on the cross saying that. And he writes decades before the Gospels where they then record that. So what I'm wondering is are your writings and your opinions on Paul and Christ separate or are they connected? And if they're connected, is Paul aware of Christ on the cross, does that affect what he believes about the Christian subject? Maybe Paul, of course he didn't read Gospels because from what I know the earliest text of Christianity that we have are Paul's letters. They come earlier than the Gospels. But nonetheless I will give you an extremely naive answer. From what I know, isn't it that nonetheless Paul speaks a lot about the death of Christ and resurrection? So he did know about death of Christ or resurrection. And that's what I—that’s why I am to put it like this for Paul. You know what Paul saw so clearly? That Kierkegaard also repeated clearly that: the message of Christ is not what he claims. What he claims is a bullshit that every average preacher could have said. The uniqueness for Christ is as intelligent theologians say that his existence itself is his ultimate message. It's not what he says. This is why and that's what I find the wonderful ultimate almost perversity of Paul. Did you notice how Paul is—this was often noted—extremely indifferent towards what Christ did or said? Fuck that, the only thing that ultimately interests Paul about Christ is that the guy dropped dead and resurrection and then in this way he redeemed us. You have none of this: Christ visited those disciples, did this, this, that and so on.
unknown
That's what—that’s what Paul saw so clearly: that everything turns about then, that's why Christ is not a Messiah. Now who saw it? Of course they didn't see it clearly and I think that's the moment that I emphasized. But I claim this is how it is with every great discovery: by definition, when you really stumble upon something new, the first gesture
That's what—that’s what Paul saw so clearly: that everything turns about then, that's why Christ is not a Messiah. Now who saw it? Of course they didn't see it clearly and I think that's the moment that I emphasized. But I claim this is how it is with every great discovery: by definition, when you really stumble upon something new, the first gesture
Slavoj Žižek
is misrecognizing it. It’s on… So you say that what’s contained in lama sabachthani in the cry of dereliction is contained in the death of Christ itself and that that's what causes Paul’s… Yes, but even something more. The problem, but the reason why I think that I may be on the right path is that again I did it in the most naive stupid way: I Googled it, I sat for three hours in foils looking at: how do Christians themselves, theologians, explain Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani and all that stuff? And I encountered an incredible confusion. Basically most of them are saying this remains—what does it mean that God himself is suffering? Doesn't he—this remains an impenetrable mystery. That's why from the very beginning, for example—I hate them—the most obscene guys are Gnostics. They claim that it was only the body of Christ that was suffering down there, while the spirit of Christ was literally—their words—somewhere above the Mount of Olives or what and just laughing at himself and at stupid people who are crying there. And I think it's a consequent solution if you don't accept the radicality of it. And there are so many other enigmas. I think that the way to arrive at this what I call bombastically hidden truth of Christianity is just to read all the inconsistencies, all the symptoms. For example, I'll give you another—I'll ask you another simple question which I remember embarrassed so many of bishops I debated with in Vienna, in Munich years ago: why does Jesus Christ have to pardon us on the cross? Why is this needed at all? If he is all-powerful God, why
is misrecognizing it. It’s on… So you say that what’s contained in lama sabachthani in the cry of dereliction is contained in the death of Christ itself and that that's what causes Paul’s… Yes, but even something more. The problem, but the reason why I think that I may be on the right path is that again I did it in the most naive stupid way: I Googled it, I sat for three hours in foils looking at: how do Christians themselves, theologians, explain Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani and all that stuff? And I encountered an incredible confusion. Basically most of them are saying this remains—what does it mean that God himself is suffering? Doesn't he—this remains an impenetrable mystery. That's why from the very beginning, for example—I hate them—the most obscene guys are Gnostics. They claim that it was only the body of Christ that was suffering down there, while the spirit of Christ was literally—their words—somewhere above the Mount of Olives or what and just laughing at himself and at stupid people who are crying there. And I think it's a consequent solution if you don't accept the radicality of it. And there are so many other enigmas. I think that the way to arrive at this what I call bombastically hidden truth of Christianity is just to read all the inconsistencies, all the symptoms. For example, I'll give you another—I'll ask you another simple question which I remember embarrassed so many of bishops I debated with in Vienna, in Munich years ago: why does Jesus Christ have to pardon us on the cross? Why is this needed at all? If he is all-powerful God, why
unknown
doesn't he simply say, “I pardon you”? Why does he have to pay the price?
doesn't he simply say, “I pardon you”? Why does he have to pay the price?
unknown
At the beginning of Christianity, this was a great debate and the—do you know that for some decades the predominant version was contract with devil? Christ has to sacrifice—the idea was this one: on this terrestrial world we are in the hands of devil. And crucifixion is the deal between Christ and devil or God. God tells devil: “I sacrifice my favorite possession, son, if you redeem humanity.” Then some other theologians claim crime should
At the beginning of Christianity, this was a great debate and the—do you know that for some decades the predominant version was contract with devil? Christ has to sacrifice—the idea was this one: on this terrestrial world we are in the hands of devil. And crucifixion is the deal between Christ and devil or God. God tells devil: “I sacrifice my favorite possession, son, if you redeem humanity.” Then some other theologians claim crime should
Slavoj Žižek
be paid for, punished. All authentic Christian knows this is an obscenity. We are back in the pagan universe as if there is some kind of justice, domain of justice above God, to which even God has to be subjected. Sorry, but for those idiots Zeus and so on this holds, not for the Christian God. So what I'm saying—another thing is this one—but people even don't notice that: but crucifixion does not mean that we are simply pardoned. It's not that Christ sacrificed himself so I now can rape, do whatever I want and—uh oh, sorry guys, the—that guy there already paid the price for me. In what sense are we redeemed through Christ? Try to answer me. I embarrass very priests through this one. Obviously, sorry, okay I stop. Okay. Now we do have to stop. There is one more question, but it will have to go without an answer, so the
be paid for, punished. All authentic Christian knows this is an obscenity. We are back in the pagan universe as if there is some kind of justice, domain of justice above God, to which even God has to be subjected. Sorry, but for those idiots Zeus and so on this holds, not for the Christian God. So what I'm saying—another thing is this one—but people even don't notice that: but crucifixion does not mean that we are simply pardoned. It's not that Christ sacrificed himself so I now can rape, do whatever I want and—uh oh, sorry guys, the—that guy there already paid the price for me. In what sense are we redeemed through Christ? Try to answer me. I embarrass very priests through this one. Obviously, sorry, okay I stop. Okay. Now we do have to stop. There is one more question, but it will have to go without an answer, so the
unknown
question
question
Slavoj Žižek
is whether you just want to state it at the end? Yes, I’m looking at you. It’s a comment on that last… If it’s a comment then that’s fine and then… But can you condense the comment into one sentence? Yes. Yeah, and then we’ll get on to Slavoj. It might seem a bit heretical but surely the simplest explanation for that cry of abandonment is that it narrates the feelings of the author? Of the author? Of the author of the Gospel. It’s a projection, is it not? Yeah but you know what a radical, my God, if we were to be in Middle Ages you would burn so in such a juicy way for this. Because I mean if it is just the author then it’s just a—then but— It’s just a text. Whoa, you would definitely burn. No, definitely burn. Slowly. You will burn slowly, slowly like, you know, I was told somewhere that to do a really good steak it must burn
is whether you just want to state it at the end? Yes, I’m looking at you. It’s a comment on that last… If it’s a comment then that’s fine and then… But can you condense the comment into one sentence? Yes. Yeah, and then we’ll get on to Slavoj. It might seem a bit heretical but surely the simplest explanation for that cry of abandonment is that it narrates the feelings of the author? Of the author? Of the author of the Gospel. It’s a projection, is it not? Yeah but you know what a radical, my God, if we were to be in Middle Ages you would burn so in such a juicy way for this. Because I mean if it is just the author then it’s just a—then but— It’s just a text. Whoa, you would definitely burn. No, definitely burn. Slowly. You will burn slowly, slowly like, you know, I was told somewhere that to do a really good steak it must burn
unknown
slowly,
slowly,
Slavoj Žižek
you know.
you know.